


White Albatross

by goodnightfern



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, DCBB 2016, Established Relationship, Lake Mead, M/M, Magical Realism, Mental Health Issues, Psychological Horror, Suicidal Thoughts, The Pacific Northwest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-22 11:44:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8284613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodnightfern/pseuds/goodnightfern
Summary: Six years of a relationship isn’t something Dean can just throw away. Cas is sick, and all Dean has to do is hold on. Even if Cas is drifting further and further away, even if the seeping blackness threatens to swallow them both. When dreams are reality and reality is void, there’s only one thing Dean knows for sure: he isn’t giving up on Cas.





	

**Author's Note:**

> First things first, I need to thank [rabidbinbadger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidbinbadger) and [sandares](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sandares) for being amazing beta readers and helping me whip this into shape! Seriously, all the love. 
> 
> Second, [dosymedia](http://blog.tmorganart.com/post/151815666378/castiel-was-formed-from-the-night-our-maker-took) made some beautiful art! I'm embedding it but go send some love. It's glorious. 
> 
> Third, if anyone can guess the very specific Seattle neighborhood this takes place in... I guess you don't win anything, but you are special. 
> 
> Alright, let's do this. My first DCBB. Hope y'all enjoy, and do heed the warnings.  
>    
> [oh and i kinda got a playlist](http://spoopernaptime.tumblr.com/post/151828525136/thats-right-yall-i-got-a-playlist)

 

 

* * *

 

 

"You staying dry out there?"

Around here, the weather is as good a conversation subject as any. Fall in Washington State was dry enough to warrant worry of drought, but December seems to be making up for it. Dean chuckles, shakes his head at the bank teller. "Trying. How you holding up, Charlie?"

"I swear, I don't think I'm ever gonna see the sun again. Guess this is our punishment for such a good summer." Charlie casts a glance out the windowed walls of the bank to the clouds pressing in close. A bright yellow raincoat is draped over the chair behind her, and the floor beneath Dean's feet is damp from the passing of customers.

"It's not so bad. I think I saw the sun, like, once? In the past week?"

"Yeah, and I was stuck in this snoozefest," Charlie mutters. "Gets dark at flippin' four-thirty. I hate winter. Once the holidays are over, what's the point?"

Charlie's always chatty when Dean comes to pay his rent. Sometimes she forgets that Dean's there to conduct actual business. "So..." Dean says, tapping the envelope on the window.

"Oh yeah. You know Castiel already paid your rent, right?"

"...what?"

"Yeah. He was here just an hour ago. I guess he didn't have time to tell you, but he did warn me you might be coming in with another deposit."

"Damn. Yeah, no, he didn't..." Dean starts, and drifts off. They've been paying rent at the same bank for the past six years. Shit, they've been friends with Charlie for around four. She knows them well enough that Cas might just leave a message with her.

There’s no messages from Cas on Dean’s phone, not even a missed call. "Must be busy," he says tightly. "Okay. Alright. I'll just... okay."

"Hey! When are we going hiking again?" Charlie hollers, but Dean's already swinging out the door.

Dean doesn't have it in him to worry how Cas conjured up another twelve hundred. So maybe he's slanging something - that would explain where he goes all fucking day. Dean deposits the cash back in his account and only slams his fist once against the ATM machine. Three times he looks at his phone, wondering if he should call, only to pull his thumb back from the screen. Out of pure curiosity he looks at his recent calls tab. Sam pops up a few times, Cas only once. Two weeks ago, Cas called to ask if Dean wanted him to buy toilet paper, and Dean didn't ask why the hell he was calling from Safeway when he should’ve been at work.

On the passenger seat of the Impala lies the dog-eared book his therapist recommended. It's full of checklists and charts, tips for surviving your significant other's depression, all wrapped up in Cosmo-level philosophy. So far the book hasn't left the car. Dean's fingers itch with the urge to toss it out the window, but he simply turns off his phone and throws it on top of the book. Turns the key.

The image comes to him while he's driving over the river. The car flying to the edge of the bridge, his foot pressing all the way down and Cas's fingers between his own. Dean looks at their clasped hands rather than the concrete edge.

Windshield wipers scrape. Airbags explode and the rain hits their bloody faces through the shattered windows. They sink into the water, now. Cas looks Dean in the eye and kisses him before it all goes black.

Dean snaps out of it.

He doesn't notice how high the river is today. How easily the murky foam would swallow them both. Tightening one hand on the wheel, Dean rolls down his window and lets the wind whip raindrops against his cheek. The rain hammers on the roof of the Impala and Dean clings to the sound, imagines it's his heartbeat.

He circles the block and rumbles down the dirt alley behind their house, dodging cats and branches and empty garden pots, until he sees Cas's bike leaning against the house through the slats of their own backyard fence. There's still a chance that Cas rode the bus; he might not be home.

Of course Dean's going inside regardless of whether or not Cas is home. It just helps to be prepared. Driving round and pulling into the driveway, Dean tries not to steel himself too hard.

There's peeling brown trim on the windowsills of their house. Rain stains the white stucco, drips from the eaves. In the front yard the garden beds are full of dead leaves Cas hasn't turned over to compost yet. The walk to the door is squelchy, last week's brief snow gone to mud.

Cas hasn't locked him out of the house yet; it's just that the door is always stuck. It's dark inside, blinds sloppily drawn against the storm. Dean throws his coat over the back of the sofa. Drops his keys on the coffee table in a mess of broken joints, empty beer cans, a bottle of rum that isn't quite finished, and the Sunset Garden book. The book is a good sign, but a second glance at the couch shows reading it didn’t help shit. There's a dead cigarette between Cas's lax fingers, the only part of him sticking out from under the blanket. Dean touches him hesitantly. Still warm. Sleeping, not dead.

Dean doesn't carry him up to their room. He just slips upstairs, throws himself on the bed and stares at a crack in the ceiling. Wishes he could sleep, but it's barely dusk.

Careful to be silent, Dean goes back to steals himself a cup of rum. Straight in a coffee mug, no chasers, no ice. Fucking Cas and his cheap ass rum.

"You can't drink cheap whiskey," Cas had said. "And cheap vodka gives terrible hangovers."

"Rum is for spring breakers."

"It's alcohol." A wry twisting of the mouth. "It’s for alcoholics."

It was one of their rare moments of levity, a crack in the ice, and then Cas had simply wrapped his lips around the bottle again.

They live together for this, to watch the other drink himself to death, to tilt the bottle when he can't. God forbid one of them should try to come up for air; the other will be there to shove him back down the bottle.

The oven clock says it's only 5:30 in the evening, but last night's insomnia is already wearing Dean down. There's little else to do besides sleep, but the liquor fills him with false energy and a lingering frustration with the man passed out drunk on the couch. He lights a cigarette and sits at their table. Once upon a time he would have never smoked, much less indoors, but in this rat-infested shack pretending to be a Craftsman with a leaking roof it doesn't matter. This isn't a home anymore. Even last summer's garden went to shit, overtaken by cabbage worms and weeds. The floor is littered with receipts and bottlecaps, all from the corner liquor store. There's a few dirty dishes in the sink. Their bedroom is draped in laundry, separate piles on the floor for dirty versus clean the closest they come to organizing. The most Cas will let Dean get away with is washing the dishes, taking out the bottles, and sweeping maybe once a week.

They aren't people anymore. They don't need to pretend here.

Behind him, Cas moans in his sleep, shifts on the couch.

Underneath him, the scratching of rats.

There's still beer in the fridge. It's a miracle. 

 

 

Dean vaguely recalls reading something about how the people up here are prone to alcoholism and depression. But it's Alaska that has the highest suicide rates. As December closes in dark and damp, he buys a little therapy light and sets it up on the kitchen table. He holds back the hope that Castiel will actually use it. This started in the middle of summer for Cas, anyways. But every morning, after he feeds the chickens and gathers the eggs, he turns it on and sits for at least twenty minutes. It's the same amount of time he'd spend drinking coffee, so he might as well do it in front of the light.  

Neither of them have to work Christmas Day. The co-op is closed and while his boss doesn't give a shit about holidays Dean only works four days a week at Bobby’s auto shop. Cas doesn't know Dean knows that he quit his job at the nursing home weeks ago. Cas doesn't even know what fucking day of the week it is anymore. He still pretends he's going to work, goes out for eight hours to do god knows what. So when Cas takes off, Dean takes the opportunity to clean. Cas will be pissed when he gets home, but Dean has learned by now that he can't do anything to help Cas. All he can do is work towards his own sanity, keep steady, and wait for Cas to make his own decision. That's what the therapist said after Cas had just left, after Dean had cajoled and lied to get him in the office.

Cas hadn't spoken to Dean for three days after that.

There’s always the option of the seventy-two hour psychiatric hold, but the last thing he needs to do is betray whatever scrap of trust Cas has in Dean. As far as he knows Castiel has purchased no firearms, no heroin, no pills.

On the other hand, Cas would never call 911. Cas could lock himself in the bathroom - while Dean's at work, trying to sleep - and Dean wouldn't even know it had happened. Sometimes when Dean is just rounding their corner he wonders if this is it and the EMTs are already there with their white sheets and red spinning lights. Or he’ll come inside and open the bathroom door and that’ll be it. Maybe the shower curtain will be closed, and Dean won’t even know at first.

Right now, at least, the bathroom is clean. After scrubbing the toilet Dean starts on the whole house. Cas is gone, and there’s a cold breeze cutting through the stink of squalor that energizes him. Dean is careful not to clean too much, arranging the detritus on the coffee table in its precise order after dusting. The kitchen sink gleams, at least, and the floor is mopped for once. Dean even answers his brother's call just because it's Christmas. On the California coast Christmas is foggy and rainy, same as it is here.

"Dude, when the hell are you gonna visit again?" Sam's voice cuts through a bit of static. Always driving while on the phone. Kid's gonna get himself killed.

"I dunno, man. Just - work and all, you know?"

"I miss you guys. How's Cas, anyways? Put me on speaker or something."

"Cas is good. He. Uh. He had to work. On Christmas, right? Gotta get that vacation pay."

"Uh huh," Sam says, but Dean knows how thin his lies are getting. He can already hear the questions hidden in the thickness of Sam's voice when he wishes Dean and Cas both a Merry Christmas. But if he doesn't keep it up, he'll end up spilling the whole gallon of milk and Sam doesn't need that shit. Dean doesn't need Sam having that shit. Instead he makes up some crap about how some friends from work are coming for Christmas dinner, and he's really got to get that turkey in the oven.

Sam tells Dean he loves him before he hangs up. Dean mumbles out a "You too, Sammy," and then the line falls blessedly dead.

Before he can get too carried away, Cas is back. It's only been four hours, but Dean knows better than to point it out. Cas doesn't give a crap about keeping his lies straight anymore. There's a giant poinsettia with crushed leaves in his arms.

"Nice," Dean says. "Put 'er on top of the bookshelf over there."

"I found it in a dumpster." Cas sets the poinsettia on the coffee table as if he hasn't even heard Dean. Falling on the couch, he glares at the red leaves. Turns the pot with his socked foot so they face away from him. "I didn't know Christmas happened yet."

Dean doesn't tell him that today is the 25th, but he gives the poinsettia a drink of water anyway. Clearing a space on the dining table, he sets it in the center. There's a few broken stems he snaps off. Must have been thrown away by some supermarket employee. As for what Cas was doing hanging around dumpsters, who the hell knows.

There's nothing on TV but god damned Christmas specials. Cas pours some rum in the same cup that's been sitting on the coffee table since last night and settles to watch animatronic reindeer. "I've seen this before," he says, "but I never remember it."

The snowman sings almost loud enough to drown out the sounds of the rats beneath the floor.

"Fucking rats," Dean says, stuck at the kitchen table.

"It's some kind of cultural meme."

"They just don't quit."

This is what passes for conversation here. The bubbler doesn't even have water in it, but Cas doesn't give a shit, just takes a big rip before waving the pipe in Dean's direction. Dean doesn't partake as much, but fuck it. Merry Christmas.

The gnawing under the floorboards gets louder.

Dean stomps with his exhale, cursing. "You think Home Depot's open today? I gotta get rat poison."

Cas just looks at him. Oh, so now they're acknowledging each other.

"What?" Dean hates that icy attention fixated on him.

"Rat poison? That's not a fun way to go."

"The fuck - not me for me, Jesus." He stomps his foot again. "Can't you hear those damn rats?"

"No, Dean," Cas says, and before Dean can even tell if he's doing that deadpan thing again he's back to fucking Rudolph. "You know it isn't rats."

Right. Of course.

Dean doesn't tell their slumlord about the rats. The asshole would say they brought them here, and that isn't covered in the lease. He's been putting poison under the house, and sometimes he can't hear it for a few days and he can breathe easy again, but then it starts up - while he's struggling to sleep, while he’s feeding the chickens, while he's making coffee, while he throws leftovers from takeout in the microwave. When he's blearily brushing his teeth, when he's slumped in an alcohol-induced coma with Cas in front of the tv. It's the loudest thing in the house.

According to Cas, it's just the ghost of his dead father.

According to the Cas Dean met six years ago, he never knew his parents.

 

 

 

The man has startlingly blue eyes. Dean drops the jar of peanut butter and curses, jumps back, and fuck, he just swore in front of a customer -

Cas's eyes are laughing -

No, he doesn't know his name yet. Back in the present Dean squints against the fluorescent lights of the freezer department, conjures up the memory again.

"It didn't make too much of a mess," the stranger says. He has that intimate kind of smile that pulls Dean into the joke, that has Dean grinning bashfully and sprinting off to go fetch a fresh jar himself. It's the fresh-grind stuff they sell in the bulk department. So the guy ends up trailing Dean and catching the awkward moment when he realizes that he doesn't even know how much the guy had gotten and if he had a lick of sense he would've weighed it out to record the spoilage first. That's when the guy sees Dean's nametag and thanks him.

Turns out he's a new member at the co-op. The first shift Dean has with him he almost knocks a case of farm-fresh cucumbers all over the floor. The first time he waves at Dean, a shy tilt of fingers, Dean bashes his shin in a case of frozen buffalo steaks. Immediately Cas ducks his head, looking shamed, and offers Dean ice for what’s sure to be a 'painful area of broken blood vessels beneath the skin,' and Dean asks him if he meant a bruise.

His full name is Castiel and aside from the co-op shifts he works in a nursing home. His hands are big and distracting when he cups the soft rounds of peaches. Dean can see those hands gripping the fragile hands of his patients.

On Saturdays, Cas walks shelter dogs. On Sunday nights, he serves soup at a shelter. Sometimes Dean even goes with him. He's a little nervous around the dogs, but Cas has a way with them. The homeless people at the shelter reek and some of them look at Dean like they'd enjoy seeing him inside-out, but Cas treats them all with the same grace.

It's months before Dean works up the courage to ask him on a date. They tour a local honey farm the co-op sources from, drive home through late afternoon light with the windows down, stop at a taco truck where Cas spills salsa on his shoes. Dean is too scared to kiss him. Cas kisses him with his eyes open.

Cas has no opinion on Star Trek versus Star Wars because he hasn't seen either, but his quiet patience makes up for his social awkwardness. When people talk, Cas actually listens. As an orphan raised in a series of foster homes, he once confessed to Dean that he'd always been a spectator, never quite a participant.

Dean doesn't find out he had been a virgin until well after the first time they have sex.

By the end of their first year together they have their first fight because Dean's falling in love. Kind of a one-sided fight. Cas stands back and watches Dean throw himself against the rocks, and then he just reaches. One hand on the countertop, the other outstretched and open, eyes fixed on Dean. Maybe Cas just doesn’t know what to say or what to do, but it’s as if Cas is reading Dean’s mind. Beneath those eyes staring down all the layers of Dean there's nowhere to hide.

All Dean has to do is take the hand offered. Simple as that.

So Dean falls. Out of his apartment and into Cas's little house on the outskirts of town with a yard swarming with plants and chickens, scratchy records and late nights on the back porch. Golden summers, cozy winters, the work of the spring and the harvest of the fall. Nights spent curled together, morning routines peppered with quick kisses. Simply existing in Castiel's space is the biggest privilege Dean could never deserve.

Yeah. That was all six years ago.

Jesus.

A turkey is still cradled in Dean's freezing fingers. He's getting in the way of a customer.

These days Cas isn't even a co-op member anymore. The turkeys they stocked up on for Christmas are all half-off now. Dean slaps stickers on each frozen bird and ignores the girl with big blue eyes checking him out in the produce section.

You don't throw away six years for a bout of depression. You just don't. It's not like Dean didn't have his own issues, what with his fucking dad and the ensuing emotional constipation and self-hatred, and Cas had been there. So now it's Dean's turn. Even if the empty bottles on the floor sometimes remind him of John Winchester. Dad was one of those people…

Not that Dean gives up on family. Not that he gave up on Dad; he never, _ever_ gave up on his father. But John didn’t want to be helped.

Cas can be helped. It’s not too late for him; this depression is a new thing. It’s never too late for anyone, least of all Cas, but here it’s different, and Dean doesn’t even know where to begin. With Dad it was always chaos and terror, gritted teeth and closed eyes. With Cas, it's just... sad. There's no action for him to take, nothing to fight against. This far into Cas's depression, Dean has finally realized that all he can do is just be there for him. Be whatever Cas needs, even if that's just a drinking partner.

Cas isn't a lost cause. Some part of him is still there.

Somewhere.

Dean holds onto that vibrant image of their first meeting and just breathes.

After his shift Dean ends up taking home one of the discount Christmas turkeys. As late as he gets home, Cas is still gone, so Dean has time to be as loud as he wants while he cleans the kitchen and makes the house somewhat presentable. Granted, he has to leave the coffee table alone, but once the Dirty Dancing soundtrack covers up the sounds of the gnawing beneath his feet Dean is on a roll. He grabs a few leaves from the weed-choked rosemary outside and makes a buttery rub for the turkey, roasts it upside-down to keep the breast tender. They've got instant mashed potatoes in the cupboard, and the asparagus in the fridge isn't too mushy yet.

Setting the table would be going too far. A scene like that and Cas might think he's trying to push him into something. No expectations or demands here. Cas will walk in, and Dean will turn down Hungry Eyes and be like, hey, dude, we had these turkeys on sale since Christmas is over. It was a really good deal.

Soon enough the turkey's skin starts crisping and the house smells fantastic. There's a six pack in the fridge, but Dean doesn't feel like drinking.

Cas comes in hollow-eyed and vacant, letting the cold inside. He walks into the kitchen without taking a glance at the oven, grabs a beer, and then flops down on the couch.

"You cooked," he says.

"Turkeys were half-off."

"Hm. It smells nice."

"Should be ready in about an hour or so," Dean tries.

"Maybe I'll be hungry by then," Cas says and flicks on the TV.  

"Turn it up," Dean tells him. "Those rats just won't quit."

Dean doesn't bring Cas a plate. He eats at the table like a normal fucking person in front of the therapy light, and after he's put his plates in the dishwasher Cas stands in front of the counter and picks at the turkey with a fork. Stilling over the sink, Dean waits until he hears Cas make a pleasant humming sound around a mouthful of potato and turkey before breathing again. As he goes to bed, Cas makes to turn down the television, but Dean stops him. The Golden Girls are loud, but they aren't loud enough to drown out the niggling sound of teeth on wood. Dean closes his eyes and focuses on Bea Arthur's voice. A young Will Smith rapping about West Philadelphia. The Magic Bullet half-hour special advertising program. It's warm in the room, at least. Cas seems to have a thing for keeping the windows open, but he rarely goes in the bedroom anymore.

Somehow Dean falls asleep. 

Too soon Dean awakens at the sudden feel of pressure on the bed. Holding his breath, he tries to look over his shoulder as inconspicuously as possible.

Cas is oddly pale. Somehow he looks younger. Must be the moonlight, softly sheening through the open window. It's cold, but if Cas opened the window Dean knows better than to protest.

He doesn't even look drunk.

Stars are spinning in Cas's eyes. He doesn't say a word, just reaches for Dean's cheek. The touch isn't even a touch, more of a soft brush of a falling snowflake. Dean reaches for Cas's hand and finds nothing, his hand passing through icy air.

Cas isn't here. He was never here. Swallowing, Dean swings up off the bed and creeps to the door, to the edge of the stairs. There's Cas, scruffy-jawed in his stinking hoodie, on the couch with a bottle in his hand. Blue light plays over the angles of his face. On the television, a tall blonde holds up a bottle of protein powder, teeth gleaming white.

Just a dream.

Before he goes to bed Dean shuts the window.

 

 

  
  
Dawn fog seeps through the chain-link fence. Dean breathes it in along with his cigarette, watches the smoke melt into the grey, and tosses out the dead poinsettia before he heads out for his morning stroll. His therapist says it’s a good coping mechanism; Dean doesn’t tell her this was once a daily routine with Cas.

The collies three houses down bark at him, tails wagging. Across the street the celery grows tall under its winter cloche. The next house has a sweet paved path curling down a lawn littered in plastic chairs and potted plants. Dean picks up a beer can and throws it in someone's recycling, pats a plastic flamingo on the head and admires the shrouded form of the 57 Chevy that's constantly being worked on. Three kids slink by on their bikes, circling and curving down the damp street. Tree roots crack the sidewalk intermittently, creating mountainous obstacles where Cas always hated to ride his bike. In front of the community center, a stale loaf of donated bread collects mold.

In the summertime Dean and Castiel used to volunteer at the community center to serve the kids free lunch.

Maybe they should move. Get some fresh air outside of this damp and musty city. Get out of these misty woods all packed deep in the cloistered mountains. They could go back to the clean horizons in Kansas where Dean spent his earliest childhood. But winter there means three feet of snow and blizzards, and then Cas would have to stay inside all the time.

Maybe California. Somewhere along the coast, an hour or so away from Sam. Somewhere sunny, not too expensive.

Dean would have to find a new therapist.

Hannah's pretty damn good. Not that Dean needs a therapist, he's not the depressed one. But he did a lot of scouting around back when he was still making effort to help Cas, and now he just goes in to see Hannah sometimes. She's got solid advice, carries the amount of detachment he needs. The walls of her office are a pale and muted blue, and Dean spends three or four hours in a month sprawled on a smooth leather couch staring at her embroidered throw pillows and choking on his words.

She says Cas's depression is infecting Dean.

He bites his tongue before he tells her about that drive home from the bank. Then again, if he can get a recommendation from her, maybe he can get his own prescription for Zoloft or whatever and just give it to Cas. Cas doesn't have Obamacare, but Dean gets a fairly decent plan.

So he tells her about driving the car off the bridge.

She sits up a little straighter. "You say you saw a vision," she says.

"Just like a mental image, you know?"

"But there were sounds. You saw it before your eyes."

"It was just an idea. Maybe like a dream. When you aren't asleep yet but you have those little flashes or something. Not a hallucination. I knew it wasn't real but... I dunno," he says finally. "I just saw it."

"Was this the first time you've had these thoughts?"

"I don't know, I don't fucking know. There were dreams, I guess. Kept seeing him put the gun to his head, so many times." Covering his wry laugh with his hand, Dean glances up at Hannah's frown. "We don't own guns, no worries. But. No. I don't have those kind of dreams anymore."

Sometimes it's unnerving how similar Hannah and Castiel look. Dean hasn't really looked her in the eyes since the first handshake. It's just that detached therapist look letting Dean know he's being constantly analyzed here that weirds him out.

"But you do have dreams," Hannah says.

"Not too many. I see Cas sometimes."

"What does he do in your visions?”

“I don’t know,” Dean says, slightly embarrassed. “Sometimes it’s fine, sometimes he’s a little off. But he doesn’t talk to me or anything.”

“I know it isn't easy," Hannah says. "But I'd like if you could get Cas in here to meet me sometime."

"I'm trying."

"I know. It's up to Cas. But - back to you, Dean. In our last visit you said you haven't been dreaming at all for a while. Nothing but darkness, you said. Do you think anything has changed that’s making you dream again?"

"Not really." Dean says. “I mean, I don’t dream every night. Sometimes it’s just all black.”

Hannah scritches on her pad. “Hm. All right. So, do you still go for walks in the morning?”

“Oh, yeah. Coping mechanisms, all good.”

Hannah always looks like she knows when Dean is lying.

 

 

 

Another week, and Cas seems to be making an effort again. Fresh compost spread over the garden beds, dirty handprints on the front door. Cas is actually drinking out of a glass, not a bottle. The vodka is more than fifty percent orange juice. He's hovering over the stove, sluggishly stirring a pink mess of meat in a frying pan.

"The ground pork was on it's last day. Figured I’d make a bolognese," Cas says.

The half-full jar of spaghetti sauce that's been sitting in the fridge for the past week lies on the counter amidst a scattered mess of black pepper.

"Smells good," Dean says.

"Maybe you want pasta with it. You should make some."

"I dunno. I don't really feel like cooking today. Bolognese is pretty good on it’s own."

"Fine," Cas says. "I'll make the fucking pasta."

Dean sits back and watches his rigid movements. Cas's fingers are too tight around the bottle of spaghetti sauce. When it slips from his hands to shatter on the floor, Cas freezes, looking stunned. Dean makes a move to rise, but Cas is already on his knees trying to clean with shaking hands.

"I'll get it," Dean says.

"Stay back. I don't want you to cut yourself." Cas's voice is distant, too soft. He's already cut himself.

"Alright. You got it. Don't worry about the sauce; there's another jar in the cupboard."

Cas gives the barest of nods. It could be blood on his hands, or maybe it's just spaghetti sauce. Whatever it is, it's dripping all over when Cas gets up, reaches for one of the plates he had stacked and throws it on the floor.

It's sturdy vintage pottery, so he has to pick it up and throw it harder. Finally it shatters.

The second plate falls next.

Cas is utterly expressionless, so Dean tries an experiment. There's a forgotten mug on the table he throws to the floor. When the handle breaks off and rolls across the floor, there's a twitch on Castiel's face.

"That blue bowl," Dean says. "The one I hate. Get that."

It's up in the cupboard. Cas grabs it and smashes the ugly pattern to bits. A trail of blood traces the motion of his hand. Dean grabs another mug, throws it to the floor.

By the time the kitchen is littered in shattered plates, there's half a smile on Castiel's face and blood streaking down his arm, droplets on his face, on the floor. They've wrecked half the plates in the cupboard. An ancient Pyrex bounces off the floor, refuses to shatter, and Cas actually chuckles. It's one of those sturdy bowls designed not to break, but by time they shatter it Cas is crouched on the floor, knees to his chest. Blood is soaking his shirt but Dean is laughing too, carrying that laughter all the way to the drawer to grab a kitchen towel. He catches Castiel's arm before he can throw another plate.

Blood soaks through the towel. There's wetness at the corner of Castiel's eyes. The smile fades but he's still panting, eyes tracing the blood patterns he's splattered on the floor, brightening the shards of pottery. Tightening his fist around the towel, Cas leans against the counter. Closes his eyes. Dean's other arm comes up, and Cas gives in, relaxing into the curve of it. "We made a mess," Cas says.

"We are a mess."

"I'll sweep it up. I'll go to Goodwill tomorrow, get us some more plates."

"You do that."

Cas sighs, ducks his head. Dean could stroke his hair, but he doesn't want to push his luck.

"I'm trying, Dean."

"I know you are, babe." Dean's voice can't help but crack around the endearment.

Cas might need stitches, but he refuses the hospital. After all, if he's quit his job he doesn't have health insurance anymore, but Dean isn't supposed to know about that. Dean can acquiesce, but Cas doesn't let him lead him to the bathroom until he's left the broom handle bloody.

Under hot running water Dean washes both of their hands. Two more towels end up covered in bright red stains. Dean lays butterfly strips across the wounds, trying to force them closed. He makes small splints out of wooden skewers for the cut fingers and wraps them with enough gauze that Cas wouldn't be able to move them anyways. As a last resort he ties a loose sling to keep the hand stable, just above the heart.

Cas takes Dean's ministrations well, not even wincing against the burn of rubbing alcohol. Once he's all wrapped up he even looks at Dean, eyes landing somewhere at the corner of Dean's mouth.

"Thank you, Dean."

"You okay? Light-headed?"

"I'm fine - Dean, I'm sorry."

"Accidents happen. But, uh... I don't think you should go to work tomorrow." When Dean stands up it's hard not to let his hands linger.

"I'm not."

"Cas -"

"I suppose you've already figured it out." Then Cas gets up too quickly, feet slipping in his blood. "I quit months ago. I quit - I quit everything. Okay? I'm sorry. But don’t worry about money, I got on EBT, and -"

"Why didn't you say anything to me?"

"Why would I?"

"Because -" Dean starts and stops. Looks down at the drops of blood. He can't yell at Cas. Can't afford to break like that, not when Cas needs him to be the rock. These are selfish things he needs to vent. Before, in the early days of Cas's depression, there was too much of that. Dean pleading, shouting, crying. Telling Cas he was gonna send his ass to the psych ward if he kept refusing to get help. Now he just lets Cas walk away.

"You need to stop worrying," Cas says, and Dean bites his tongue.

Once the television's on, Dean is free to bash his head into the wall without worrying about the sound. He stays in the bathroom until Cas's blood dries black on the floor, and then he stalks into the living room to pour a cup of whatever the fuck Cas is drinking tonight. Red-rimmed eyes blink up at him, the laughter in them entirely the product of marijuana.

"Sit with me, Dean. Watch this. It's really funny."

"Home Shopping Network?"

"It disgusts me," Cas says flatly. "Look at this. It's just a bowl to cook ramen in. There's nothing special about it. Literally, the only reason why it 'speeds up' your ramen's cook time is the extended surface area.  You could achieve the same effect with any bowl, or pay twenty dollars for this plastic one. It's _funny_."

Dean sits down on the couch for exactly fifteen minutes. When he's drunk his drink and announces he's going to bed, Cas is too stoned to notice. Somehow they've made it to Spongebob. He stops to take a piss before he heads to bed.

There's more blood on the floor than he realized, drying tacky and black. His bare feet leave tracks in the mess, but he'll clean it up in the morning. For now he steps into the bathtub to clean off his feet, then hops across the tile to make it safely out of the bathroom.

Cleaning it up takes hours out of the next morning. It seems the more Dean scrubs, the more blood there is. Sticky pools of black, not quite dry all the way. Cas lost a lot more blood than he thought. With a sigh Dean gets up to rinse out the green scouring pad in the sink.

Now that he's looking back at it, the floor looks a lot cleaner. He finishes it off with a final spray of 409 and twelve more paper towels. It can't have been too much blood. Cas seems fine, snoring on the couch with his hand propped up in the sling. The gauze is still white and clean, no blood soaking through. Dean shakes his head, goes back to look at the mess in the bathroom trash.

It wasn't that bad.

When Cas wakes up, he mixes up a slop of Bisquick and milk, propping the bowl against his wrapped-up hand. The pan is smoking by the time he drops batter and the pancakes crisp too fast. There's no syrup in the house, but Dean piles on the butter and dregs up some gusto. They eat straight from the pan. Dean rolls up a pancake into a burrito so Cas can eat it with one hand.

Cas keeps his promise. When Dean gets home from work one day there's a pile of unsorted pottery on the kitchen counter, all glazed in earth shades. There's a roughness to each piece, as if it was made by hand on a rustic wheel.

"Where'd you get all this?"

"A woman in Uttar Pradesh," Cas says. "Well. I got it from Goodwill, but she was the one who made it."

"How'd you figure that?"

"The inscription on the bottom."

Dean flips over the mug. He never knew Cas could read Hindi.

The collection keeps growing. Cas brings home blue china plates, intricately patterned ceramics, and even more homespun pieces. One day he even brings home a large, hollow bird made of rounded shapes, painted in floral patterns. It sits on the kitchen table, round bug-eyes keeping watch over the house. According to Cas, they're a specialty of Tonala, Mexico, and there's even the name written in spidery script down the bird's tail.  

Meanwhile, the compost fills up with paper plates. Cas doesn't want to talk about it. Dean uses one of the new mugs that has streaks from the potter's fingerprints for his morning coffee.

Perhaps Cas is attending some kind of group therapy. Maybe they sit around in front of spinning wheels and talk about their feelings. And that has to be kept a secret from Dean for some fucking reason. Whatever it is, it’s a positive coping mechanism. Hannah would like it. Maybe Dean should try something like that, if he didn't have to fucking work all the time.

People seem quieter around Dean - both at Bobby's shop and at the co-op grocery. There's silences to fill and he does, jokes getting bawdier and references getting more obscure. He knows he's obvious, but if he keeps it up well enough no one will ask. The people at the co-op seem a little more concerned because they used to work with Cas as well as Dean, but Dean foists off any questions with ease. Nobody needs to know the reason for the dark circles under his eyes. Sometimes in the bathroom when he's struggling to scrub the engine grease on his hands, his face will catch him. So he closes his eyes, turns off the bathroom light, and scrubs in the darkness until he can't feel the grit of the orange scrub and the slick of grease anymore. He takes in a few good minutes of peace and no goddamn scratching before he has to show his fucking exhausted face again, before he has to go home and keep sorting pottery and plead with Cas to let him change his bandages.

Cas is lucky he only cut his palms. A few cuts wrap around his middle finger, but the palm heals fast and scars light.

Sometimes, when Dean catches him lying on the bed on those rare, quiet nights, he can't even see the scars.

It’s just dreams, but every time he feels wide awake. Once he gets out of bed, goes to the door and sees Cas still on the couch, he knows. The still, pale Castiel with no scars on his fingers is always gone by the time he turns around, and his subconscious returns to the drifting abyss of darkness.

The pale white of the therapy light always casts an eerie glow beneath the bedroom door at night. It's a relief to throw the damn thing in the attic.

  


"I've got a job," Cas announces one evening between a bite of cheese and mushrooms. He ordered pizza, actually exchanged three words with the delivery kid. Money has been sort-of an issue Dean doesn’t want to talk about, but if Cas isn’t working they’re short. Mysterious December rent payment aside. "And, before you ask, I don't have to be sober for it."

"Fuck kind of question would that be?" Dean blinks at him. “And what kind of job do you not have to be sober for?”

There's a weary softness in Castiel's eyes. As if the notion that Dean should have any faith in him was easy to lose. “Corner store. What else?’

Cas even got a graveyard shift. On nights when the scratching is too loud, Dean pulls up across the street from the Gas-N-Sip and watches him. There's a small TV, usually tuned to the sports channel. Alcoholics stumble in for cans of malt liquor. The endless parade of cigarette addicts. A few people actually just buy gas and snacks. Through the window he can make out Cas talking with his hands, lips moving too fast. Cas is still greasy and unshowered, and Dean knows for a fact there's something else in his Big Sip cup. When Cas steps out for his first cigarette, Dean leaves before he can spot the hulking shape of the Impala.

In the silence without the television, the roaring in Dean's head somehow overpowers the scratching. It's almost a relief to have Cas out of the house. Dean can sink into the darkness that lives just underneath his eyelids, seeps down into his skull. He hears the waves, and somewhere the undercurrent of nails raking floorboards, but without Cas - without the television - he can sink into oblivion, faster and faster.

Now that Cas sleeps during the day Dean can just creep around him. At dusk and dawn they see each other. Sometimes Cas is making another mess in the kitchen, slicing cheese directly on the countertop. Or he's stabbing at a bowl of eggs with a fork to get a shard of shell out. The coffeepot is always full, and while the recycling bin piles up as fast as ever, Dean doesn't have to see quite so much of it.

He starts his own liquor stash under the bed. Cas doesn't seem to sleep there even when Dean's at work, so it's safe. He sticks to the half-pints.

"Yeah, I've been sleeping great," he tells Hannah. "We’ve had some breakthroughs. Cas got a job, and it seems to be really working out for him."

"Ah."

"Yeah. I mean, he's just cashiering at a gas station. Graveyard shift. But I think it's good for him, and he gets to be nocturnal."

"A gas station," Hannah says, sounding a little too disappointed for the supposed role of uninvolved observer.

"It's something."

"Cas used to help people," she says. "Does he help people at the gas station?"

"I guess," Dean shrugs. "He helps his co-workers. The owner of the gas station. The customers."

"Hm." Hannah narrows her eyes, squints at the floor. "I suppose that's good for him, then. Do you find it easier to sleep with him gone at night?"

"We're here to talk about Cas," he reminds her. "Not me."

Her eyes show more emotion than Castiel's ever will. "Therapy is whatever you need it to be," she allows. "But you don't think Cas's depression is affecting you?"

"It's affecting the house," Dean says. "He's so fucking messy all the time. Stressing me out. But like I said, it's getting better."

"Do you still see him in your bed?"

Dean looks up, sharp-eyed. He doesn't remember telling her about those dreams. Hallucinations. Or maybe he did. He's been drinking a lot lately. "No," he says.

Hannah always knows when Dean is lying.

  


Just to punish him for the lie, Cas shows up in bed the same night. He's wearing the old shirt of Dean's that he put on the morning after their first time. The faded ZoSo symbols are spectral holograms in the moonlight. He's smiling, and his lips are moving, but Dean can't hear his words.

"What is it?"

But Cas doesn't answer. Doesn't seem to even realize Dean's talking. Dean doesn't get up, doesn't go. Maybe his mistake is that he always leaves these dreams too soon. But as he watches, the darkness slips over his form, trickling down Cas's eyes and out of his mouth, and then Dean is wide awake.

Cas is at work tonight.

Dean drives past the Gas-n-Sip just to prove it to himself. Cas is smoking outside as usual, but this time he sees Dean. His eyes catch the headlights, pulling Dean to a stop.

Dean rolls down the window, and they stare at each other.

"Hi," Dean says.

"What are you doing here?"

"What, a guy can't grab a pack of smokes?"

Cas shakes his head and walks back into the store. He doesn't look too drunk, but his tolerance is in the stratosphere by now.

Beyond the flickering lights of the gas station lies nothing but darkness. Somehow Dean makes it back home. He turns off the stove light, the closet light, unplugs the DVD player and the alarm clock until the house is completely dark. The void sinks over him until the dawning skies penetrate the blinds, and he realizes it's seven in the morning and Cas still isn't home.

While Dean works at the co-op, the skies open and pour.

By the time he gets home, shaking raindrops out of his hair, Cas is curled up on the floor. He's soaked through, wet clothes sticking to him and looks to be in no hurry to change.

"Cat dragged your ass in," Dean grunts.

"We don't have a cat.”

“Let's get one. Let’s get six, throw ‘em under the house and let them live off the rats.”

“What rats?” Cas sits up and curls around himself, rubbing his head. “I walked all the way home from the courthouse. They picked me up for public intoxication." His eyes slide to meet Dean's, impudent. "I walked out of work last night."

"Playin’ hooky?"

"I got fired."

"Wow. Great job."

"At least I got two paychecks out of it." Reaching behind him, Cas pulls out a can of Joose and chugs it. Dean's aware that his jaw is hanging and he must look furious, but he doesn't bother schooling his expression for once.

Cas couldn't even buy the cheap beer, he had to get the nasty malt liquor. Twenty four ounces of twelve-percent alcohol for two bucks each. Jesus. Next thing he'll by buying Nyquil and mixing that shit right in.

"Get out of here," Cas says, pulling himself up to the couch. "Stop looking at me like that."

"I live here too," Dean barks. "I ain't going anywhere." He stomps past Cas's prone form. Goes to the backyard. The chickens are all huddled together against the rain, squawking dissonantly. Looks like both of them forgot to feed them today.

Cas used to have names for all of the chickens. Today, Dean can barely remember them. Their eyes are beady and they smell like shit. Pulling out his phone, Dean snaps a few photos of the chickens for a Craigslist ad. Lots of people have backyard flocks around here; he's sure he can find someone.

There was a house thirty minutes south of here, in a sprawled out suburban neighborhood close to the woods. Three years ago he'd gone with Cas to go pick up some pullets for the flock. The entire yard had been crawling with chickens, hens squatting in every hedge and chicks running around in the sunshine. Cas had tried so hard to catch the silver leghorn, and Dean had laughed and laughed at the quick pullet racing around, Cas panting. Finally Cas had simply sat down and waited, and sure enough the leghorn had approached him. Let her guard down for one second.

Dean got to name that one. Obviously, he'd named it after his mother. As if that fucking meant anything to a chicken.

Mary stretches out her neck and twitches. She isn't really giving Dean an evil eye, it just how chickens look. Dean snaps a photo of her, adds it to the Craigslist post.

Lots of people respond to the ad, but Dean holds out until he finds someone willing to take all five. It isn't even a Craigslister. Charlie, of all the people, has been dying to start a backyard flock at her new place. They wait for a clear day to move the hens and the coop, but even then the clouds look a little threatening. She comes in a roommate's borrowed truck, grinning.

Years ago Cas built his own coop. The clean lines of cedar, fitted together perfectly, had charmed Dean right from the start. The design is simple enough, a coop situated on top of a tractor, but the outside of the coop Cas had painted a clean sky blue, simple images of daisies and bees and pecking hens. The tractor is all screwed together so it should be easy to take apart and squish it all into the back seat. But the coop itself is nailed and will take up the entire bed of the truck. It’s gonna be pretty heavy.

"We might need a third hand," Charlie says. "Where's Cas at, anyways?"

"Work."

Blinds rustle at the bedroom window. Charlie looks at the window. Then at Castiel's bike leaning beneath it, and back at Dean.

"You know, you're terrible at hiding things. The both of you."

The chicken wire is still wrapped all around the tractor. It's easy enough to take off, and Charlie is holding a flathead screwdriver in her hand, which means she should be working right now and not talking shit.

"These staples pop out real easy,” Dean tells her, demonstrating. “Get on it.”

"Dean... if you need to talk to somebody..."

"What is that smell?"

"Alright. Okay. It's none of my business."

"Don't you smell that?" Grimacing, Dean points at the black shit dripping down the ladder that leads from the coop down into the tractor. Dean squats to look up at the underside of the coop. A black stain has spread, soaked through the wood Cas had so carefully treated. "Something must've rotted in there," he guesses. "Maybe they had a bad egg and it broke. Jesus, don't you smell that?"

"Smells like chicken poop," Charlie says. "I'll embrace it."

"No, dude. Don't you smell that... that weird shit?" Dean unlatches the coop. It's fucking everywhere. Thick black sludge, pooling in the bottom of the coop. Saturating the hay, oozing from every corner, sticky on his hands. "Jesus," he mutters. "I'm - I'm gonna -- I don't think you want the coop, Charlie."

"Dude, come on. It's just a little bit of poop."

"What?" There's sticky black on Dean's fingers, dripping down his arm. "Charlie, this is fucking disgusting. I think something died in here."

"Dean! What are you freaking out about?" Charlie laughs, reaches in and actually brushes at the sludge. Her hands come away clean. "It's fine. I'll just put the poopy hay in the compost. It'll be perfect for next year's garden."

"Hell no," Dean says. "I'll clean this, bleach it the fuck out. Scrub it down, clean coat of whitewash, you'll be good to go."

"It's not like a new flock will be living there, Dean. Seriously, it's fine."

"What - don't you see that?"

Charlie shakes her head, but lifts the cat carriers full of hens. The deconstructed tractor is light enough for her to carry herself while Dean heads to the shed to find something to clean out the black gunk.

Charlie will find another chicken coop. She could build her own. But in the meantime she's got a fully fenced yard, and Dean really doesn't need to go with her to help settle in the chickens. He's got this mess to deal with. Charlie just brushes her bangs out of her eyes and tries to give him sympathetic eyes. Apparently Dean can call her anytime, but he's already balls deep in soap suds.

The coop Cas built is a lost cause. It's like the more Dean scrapes and scrubs, the more it piles up until his soap bucket is nothing but inky black suds and his hands are cracked and pruny. He needs more cleaning supplies. Harsher chemicals.

In the kitchen Cas is half-heartedly scrubbing a burnt pan. The entire house smells like ash. Dean stands there with his hands held out in front of him, waiting.

"You got rid of the chickens," Cas says above the scrape of copper on stainless steel.

"Yeah." Dean can't remember the last time Cas even fed the chickens.

"Oh, I'm not complaining, I'm thanking you. They haven't been happy here for a while." Cas gives up on the pan. Leaves it to soak in the sink and dries his hands, rolls the sleeves of his hoodie back down. Fully ensconced, Cas looks very small. Dean squats to dig under the sink, brushing past Castiel's knees, and comes back out with bleach, a wire scrubber, rubber gloves, and a can of Ajax. When he comes back up Cas is staring at him, one brow raised.

"Chicken coop's full of shit," Dean says. "Some kind of weird black gunk."

"Hm."

Cas's feet are so soft Dean doesn't even realize he's followed him out to the yard. Ignoring him, Dean fills a bucket at the hose and gets back to work. It's congealed into a thick, sticky paste. Not unlike the pool of Castiel's dried blood, but he shoves that unfortunate association down and buries it. He scrubs until his hands ache, until the yellow of the gloves is completely obscured by black, and then Castiel's voice is soft in his ear.

"Dean, stop."

"Huh?" He whips his head around, and Castiel's face is too close.

"It's clean. Just hose it down, Dean."

"Are you shitting me? Look, there's -"

Oh. It's not that bad. Once he hoses it down, the coop is clean. He was expecting stains on the wood, but it's pure white. Working into dusk, Dean adds another coat of whitewash anyways. Cas sits on an overturned five-gallon bucket and watches him, sipping beer. Finally once Dean's done he grabs a beer from Cas's six-pack and sprawls out on the grass next to the bucket. Cas holds out his bottle with something like a smile on his lips as they clink beers together.

Night falls in cold but dry, only the clouds over the moon. They talk about nothing - the weather, the grass under their feet, the lingering scent of the hens. Cas hopes they're happy with Charlie. He hasn't spoken to Charlie in a long time. Or any of their friends, for that matter. Cas directs his question to the label on his bottle when he asks if they even still have friends.

"We could," Dean tells him. "We still do."

For once Cas sleeps in the bed with Dean - two feet away, but he's there. Dean doesn't try to kiss him. The heat of someone else in the bed for once is enough. In the morning Cas has one well-muscled arm thrown across Dean's chest. Hand curled just over Dean's pounding heart. Holding his breath, Dean strokes the backs of his knuckles, the tendons of his hand.

He's always loved Castiel's hands.

 

 

 

On his lunch break at the garage, Dean calls Sam. Just to check in, see how he's doing. Apologize for the missed calls.

"Dean, you don't have to say anything if you don't want to," Sam says after the hellos and the howsits are finished. "But. I love you guys, you know? And if anything is going on with you and Cas - not that it's any of my business, but if you just need someone to talk to?"

Throwing a glance over his shoulder, Dean sees some of the guys standing around the yard. He grabs his sub and goes to the back to sit on the bumper of the Impala. Sighing, Dean rubs his cheek, and realizes he's been silent long enough that Sam knows something is up. "It's been... I don't know. I mean. Cas has... he's been having a hard time. Got laid off from his job and all. Damn budget cutbacks."

"Shit. Really? He loved working with those old folks."

"Yeah, so, he’s been a little out of it. Kinda down, you know how it is. But, hey, I think things are looking are up. He got a new job - he’s managing a gas station now. Actually, he was saying - maybe next summer or something. Once we get some more savings up, we're gonna come on down."

"That would be awesome," Sam says, tension gone from his voice. "Or. Hell. I could come up there. Spring break?"

Dean brings up a calendar in his mind's eye, flips through. Spring break is in April, right? It's February, which means... yeah. That could work.

Or not.

Hannah says not to put a timeframe on anything. Don't rush.

"We'll see," he says lamely. "I gotta go back. It's just good to hear your voice, Sammy."

"Yeah, okay. Have a good day at work." Sam sounds like he’s trying too hard to be upbeat. "Just answer your fucking phone more, okay? Talk to me, man."

"Yeah. Look, I, uh, gotta get back to work now, but I'll talk to you. Later."

By the time Dean leaves work it's already dark. The Impala's heat takes a while to turn up, and while the windshield defrosts he stares at his phone. There's a missed call and a text from Charlie.

Warhammer 40,000 nights haven't been a thing in a while. The three-word invitation is just a gesture, it doesn't mean anything, and if Dean showed up at her house he'd only bring the party down.

Of course she calls him after he texts back.

"No blood for the blood god tonight?"

"Charlie..." Dean starts.

"No one else is coming either, by the way. Actually, we haven't got the gang together in a while. Tell Cas we need our Necron Lord back." She laughs. "Well. If you still talk to him."

"I know what you're trying to do."

"Yeah? Well, humor me."

Right on cue comes the rain. It's easier to let the sound of the drops and the windshield wipers overpower Dean's own voice. But he doesn't know what to say. Maybe the silence speaks enough. "It's... it's not going well," Dean finally stammers.

"I know."

"Everybody knows, don't they. Jesus. I just... I feel like... I don't even know. I don't know how the fuck I'm supposed to feel. I don't even know what I'm doing here. I'm up shitass creek with a broken paddle, and Cas just threw his overboard. And I'm tired."

"So, what? You gonna toss your paddle out too?"

"God dammit. No." That's true. That's fucking solid. "I didn't spend the last six years with Cas to throw in the god damn towel. That's not what we do. That's not how you treat family."

"Cas is family," Charlie echoes, carefully.

"Yep."

"That's good, Dean. That's really good. But don't wear yourself too thin, okay?"

"He's just sick."

"But you can't take care of him if you're sick too, can you?"

Shit. Dean really has been obvious. Bringing the phone down from his ear, Dean looks at the time.

Cas doesn't seem to mind when Dean texts him that he won't be coming home for a while. Cas doesn't even text back, actually. Nor does he answer his phone.

Last night was a good night, wasn't it?

So, okay. Tonight is a bad night.

He spends forty minutes in a pizza parlor with Charlie, watching the rain fall and the kids at the pinball machines. Charlie tells him to stop looking at his phone and drags him to Pac-Man. The old machine is smeared in layers of pizza grease but Mrs. Pac Man still keeps rolling, chasing down her ghosts. Dean leans against the machine with his paper plate full of pizza and watches Charlie eat up little dots. She has thirty funny stories about the chickens already, and so far only one of them has been killed by a raccoon.

“When I was a kid, my best friend had a ton of chickens in her yard. Now that was the girl who helped me realize I was gay. I mean, nothing happened, but she was so cool. Kind of an anime kid.”

“That why you made me watch Evangelion?”

“You loved it.” Charlie puts two more quarters in the game.

“You still keep in touch with her?”

“No. Back in high school she started getting... weird. Stopped talking to me. Kinda became a jerk, you know? And I stopped talking to her; I didn't have time for that. I was seventeen. I was an idiot."

"We all were," Dean shrugs.

"Then all of a sudden, she changed again. She even gave me her old NES; I still have it. Night she gave it to me, she hugged me. Told me she wanted me to finish playing Earthbound and she was sorry for the high school drama.

"After I left, she told her parents she was going to bed and hung herself in her closet."

Dean's teeth clack through a slice of pepperoni. "She-?"

"I didn't know she was depressed. I don’t know if anyone knew. She didn’t talk about it at all, she just _went_.”

"Charlie," says Dean. There's tears in her eyes and a jilted smile on her lips, but her hands are still on the arcade controls.

"I know you don't wanna talk about it, Dean. But I saw Cas when he came to pay your rent, and I've seen you and I want to do something but yeah, okay, might not be my place. It’s your relationship, your lives, your decision. But I just... I'm rooting for you, the both of you, together or separate. You know that, right?”

The pepperoni is choking Dean. He coughs and reaches for his soda where it’s perched on top of the game. "Jesus, Charlie," he says again. “I mean. Thank you. I don’t know what to say.”

"It's fine. You don't need to say anything. Not if you don't want to. But if you're trying to be there for Cas, just let someone - anyone, not even me! - let them be there for you."

"I have this therapist. Well. I was gonna take Cas to her, but he didn't want that and I just got used to her, I guess.”

"That's good. Therapy is awesome. I mean, I've never been to one. Maybe I could use it?" Charlie gives a small chuckle. "Does it help?"

"Still figuring that one out," Dean tells her, and leaves it at that. He gives Charlie an extra long hug and the last slice and hopes she understands.

“I want you to be happy,” Charlie says finally. “Try to be happy, okay?”

Then she’s gone, a bright figure in the rain, and Dean stands in front of the Impala with his keys in his hands.

Cas is kind of a black hole. There's something massive and terrifying down there, and Dean doesn't know if he can -

He can.

Cas isn't some cosmic fucking terror. He's the guy Dean loves. He's his mother's old wedding ring that has been sitting along with the Impala’s spare tire that Dean has certain feelings about. He's the reason Dean will take fucking Viagra when he's sixty years old.

Right now, Cas is just sick. He's just sick, just sick, and Dean repeats it like a mantra as he drives home, up until he hits the driveway.

If they broke up Charlie wouldn't choose. Sam would have Dean's back no matter what, but Charlie and Cas were friends first. Dean wonders how many missed calls from her are hiding on Castiel's phone, how many cries for the Necron Lord went unheeded.

Charlie said Dean should be happy.

Standing before the house, Dean doesn't feel fucking happy. From the front yard he can already hear the television blaring. Cas is dead to the world on the couch, and Dean just gets back into the car and drives. Traffic is still bad but he grits his teeth, finds the arterials, and finally hits a clear patch of highway and just fucking guns it.

He's thirty miles from the Canadian border when he forces himself to turn around.

He's half a mile from the house when he gives up and finds a bar.

Honestly, Dean has one hell of a tolerance. A beer or two won't do him in. Dean could've gone to fucking Canada but he turned around, and their street is just a short drive over the bridge. So he orders a shot with his beer. There's noise in the bar, laughing voices, televised yammer, all melting into a miasma of things Dean isn't allowed to have.

Well, why the hell not?

Dean ponders the question over another beer and a whiskey on the rocks.

There's hockey on the television. Calgary vs. Portland. Dean focuses on the game. Trades jabs with a few other patrons at the bar. He says something dumb, someone else laughs, and the guy has blue eyes and a deep Southern drawl that doesn't belong in this corner of the States.

He's big enough to pin Dean down. Gruff voice with a lingering softness. A beard Dean could scratch his fingers through. Blue eyes that trawl up and down Dean's body. His name is Benny, and he's only in town for the night, leaving for Alaska tomorrow.

Somehow Dean makes it to the stool next to him. Benny's thigh brushes his own between layers of denim.

Dean deserves good things. Dean deserves to be happy. That's what Cas taught him, after all.

The eyes aren't blue enough.

Dean is saying something flirtatious, but the words die on his tongue, choke him up. Awkward, he looks around, waits for another topic of conversation to come to him. The bar is pretty low-key, dark wood and creased pleather. He's been here with Cas a few times, but not enough considering how close this place is to the house.

This one night, when they were sick of staying in and there was no food in the fridge. Dean had ordered the bacon cheeseburger and Cas had flipped out when he saw there was a bacon cheeseburger salad. Gluten-free option. Not that Cas had a gluten allergy, but to his logic if he was getting the carbs from beer, he didn't need the carbs from bread. Dean had looked down a bit awkwardly at his belly but Cas had just stroked the pudge at his hips, kissed the crook of Dean's neck. They ordered fries.

Another time. They stopped in with Charlie and the Warhammer crew after a sweaty hike to an alpine lake. Big nerds that they were, they didn't even realize that there was a Seahawks game. So they'd moved out to the back patio and sat underneath the Christmas lights strung on the pergola, giggling away from the crowd. Cas had ordered some fancy microbrew and let Dean try a few sips, lick the sour-bitter flavor off his tongue. Charlie ordered the poutine and everyone had a bite. Then Cas watched Dean lick gravy off his fingers and ordered another plate.

There were other times, other nights, all lost in the dream of the past six years.

Benny isn't even close, but suddenly all Dean sees on the bar stool is Castiel.

Vision blurring, he makes some hasty excuse. Stumbles out of the chair, leaves cash on the bar. There's a bus stop but he's out of change. The walk over the bridge is windy and biting, but Dean doesn't feel cold until he's opening the fence to his own front yard.

The streetlights never hit their house quite right. Empty trees cast skeletons over the sickly white boards. The front door is lost in a shadow that creeps over the bedroom window. Wide open, again. The streetlight flickers. Dean looks up just in time to watch it burn out, to see the darkness falling before it hits.

All up and down the street the lights are still on. Maybe Dean's had a little too much to drink, though, because he swears they're all sputtering. Let them all burn out. The city will take weeks to fix it.

Dean walks into the shadow. Crosses the trash-strewn floor to kneel by the couch, take Cas's limp hand in his own. The television is tuned to China News. Cas mumbles something in his sleep, and Dean ends up sitting on the floor, head bent back against the worn cushions.

 

 

 

When he wakes he's the one on the couch, covered in Castiel's old hoodie. He presses it to his nose and huffs the stale stench of cigarettes. His neck isn't as stiff as it should be.

Outside, Castiel is watching a grey sunrise.  

Dean shuffles out to join him in the front yard. Out of instinct he hooks his chin on Castiel's shoulder, but doesn't move in for the hug until Cas sighs, relaxes under his touch.

“I need to go get my car,” Dean says. “Wanna walk with me?”

“No.”

"All right. Um, I love you?” Maybe he doesn't tell Castiel enough.

"I know."

"Okay, Han Solo."

It almost brings a laugh out of Castiel. Almost. "Dean. You know that I love you. But -"

"I mean it, Cas. Look, I know it's been rough. On all of us. But I'm not giving up on you and I just. I need you to know that. I need you to always know that."

"Okay, Dean," Cas says, but it doesn't sound like he believes it. Gently, he pushes Dean off of him, goes inside the house.

Dean left the Impala behind the bar. It’s a quick walk over the bridge. No one fucked around with her, at least, but he can’t believe he actually abandoned her. Last night - yeah. Last fucking night.

“Sorry, baby,” he tells her. “I was being a jackass.”

The car doesn't say anything, but she always forgives.

When Dean gets home, Cas has assembled every bottle in the house. He's in front of the kitchen sink. Amber, white, and brown stream together down the drain.

Dean freezes, watching him. “Well,” is all he says.

"I don't want you to remember me like this. Drunk, passed out, hung-over all the time."

"What do you mean, remember?"

Cas doesn't turn around. "Don't worry about it."

"Don't worry?" He grabs Cas by the shoulder. "Don't worry? Cause from here, that sounds pretty fucking suicidal. That sounds like I need to take action."

"Of course I have suicidal thoughts," Cas snaps. "It's called mental illness. Don't you discuss me with your therapist enough?"

"Well, she's supposed to be your therapist. If you would just-"

"No," Cas says blandly. He moves out from Dean's grasp, leaves him hanging. "Don't you see it, Dean? There's nothing left for you here to have faith in."

"What the hell, Cas?” Cas says nothing, still doesn’t look back at Dean. “Sorry, buddy, but you don't tell me what I can or can't believe in. And you don't get to shame me for still giving a crap about you.”

"I'm just telling you your giving of craps is misguided."

"Now you're calling me an idiot?" Cas turns, opening his mouth, but Dean doesn't let him speak. "Listen, Cas. You're in a bad place right now, and okay, maybe you can't believe that I actually fucking care about you. But if the past six years have counted for anything? If I haven't walked out on you yet? I'm just saying, man. If you can't have faith in yourself, you gotta have faith in me."

"Don't give yourself too much credit. If I could kill myself, believe me, I already would have. For some reason I -" Forcibly he throws Dean's hand off, turns away and knocks two empty bottles of the counter in the process. At the shatter Cas's eyes go wide. Pulls the hood over his head until only a stubbled jaw and a sharp nose are visible, and then he heads out the front door.

“I said I love you, you ass!” Dean shouts after him, but it’s too late.

There's a broken plate in the sink. Dean sweeps it into the garbage and then he goes to sit on the front porch and watch Cas walk down the street towards the bus stop, a single dark figure in the grey morning.

Dean's sick of not knowing.

So he follows the bus.

The bus heads through the industrial district towards downtown. Cas gets off in front of a liquor store, then gets on the next one. Dean can see a dark head through the rear window, at the back of the bus where all the addicts ride. Cas transfers once, twice. Finally they're at a wooded park on the northwest side of town, and Cas is the only one to exit. He drops the paper bag from the liquor store in the garbage tin by the bus stop, and walks into a cluster of trees.

Dean parks the Impala illegally. By the time he's pushing through the trees there's no sign of Cas.

But there's - something.

It isn't a clearing so much as it is a circle of fallen trees.

Dean is utterly alone.

"Cas?"

Something whispers. Just the wind through the pines. Dean zips up his coat and steps carefully, walking across logs until he reaches the center. There's nothing there and he isn't even sure what he was looking for in the first place. A flock of geese flush up from the trees, honking their songs as they fall into formation, and somehow the sound of their wings is loud enough for Dean to hear even from the earth.

Dusk is falling. It seems too early, but the pale logs are washed over with a darkness that clings to Dean's boots.

Dean doesn't know when Cas comes home. All he knows is when he gets home from the co-op with his arms full of groceries and maybe one too many microbrews, Castiel is curled on the couch with pine needles in his hair.

They're some pretty nice microbrews. Dean was never a fancy beer guy, but Sam and Cas and working at the damn co-op got him into it. While he doesn't go for sixteen spices and fruity notes, he's learned to appreciate a good IPA. He isn't buying cheap booze just for the sake of getting drunk. He isn't numbing his tongue on some bottom-shelf shit like Castiel. Rather than watch some bullshit on television, he's gonna put on his headphones and let Zep drown out the gnawing for tonight.

The gnawing is louder than his headphones. Dean thinks of armies of rats chewing down trees like beavers, building a dam against an unstoppable tide, and turns up the volume.

  
  
  


In this dream Castiel is more substantial than ever.

He's kissing up Dean's neck, whispering some alien litany. Dean wants to hear him but he can't think, not when Cas is touching him again. When he trawls his way up to Dean's mouth he's all ice, as if Dean could get his tongue stuck like in the movies. His hands are inside Dean’s shirt, at the edge of his boxers, everywhere. Dean moans, rolls into his touch unminding of the cold. It’s been forever since they’ve touched like this and he’s desperate.

"Cas, god, _Cas_ , Fuck, I’ve missed you, please-."

Castiel only sucks his tongue down again, licks inside Dean's mouth.

Dean tries to lift his hands, touch his hair, but he suddenly can't. Opening his eyes, he looks up at Castiel's eyes and sees nothing but black.

It's dripping from his mouth.

Darting his eyes down, across, Dean sees that they're lying in a pool of black. Everywhere Cas has touched him is stained. It bubbles up in Dean's throat, sticky and choking, and Castiel's eyes grow bigger and bigger until they consume his face, until the sea of ink is overwhelming, and then Cas melts, pouring over Dean's body, trapping him, and he tries to cry out, tries to claw, and the gnawing is louder and louder and louder and then -

Just the void pinning him down, filling his throat.

Time to go, now.

But there’s this one sound, keeping him from the edge.

"DEAN!"

Cas is here. Dean opens his eyes, and it’s the real Cas, sweaty in his hoodie with more energy than Dean’s seen in a long time. He's jumping on top of the bed, grabbing Dean by the shoulders with rage and worry twisting his face.

"Cas? Hey, Cas, I’m okay."

“What happened?"

"I just had a nightmare, it’s fine, I-"

"I heard you calling for me," Cas says, voice taut. “What did you see. Dean?”

The bed is clean. Dean is clean. He wriggles out of Cas’s grip, sits up and folds his legs. Cas is still staring at him, and he reaches for his wrist, tries to soothe him. "It was a dream. It's fine."

"No, it isn’t. Tell me what you saw.”

“It was just a stupid nightmare.”

“No, Dean, you - you’re not okay, I’m sorry, fuck, I’m sorry," and his voice is shaking now, crumbling. Dean tugs him closer until he's kneeling in Dean's lap, crushing his face into Dean's neck.

Rubbing circles on his back, Dean wonders at the sudden contact. His other hand comes up to twist in Castiel's hair, greasy and textured from days without showering. He calls him babe, sweetheart, honey, babbling nonsense trying to calm him down, and Cas just chokes out these half-laughs, half-sobs into his neck. When Cas finally lifts his head he kisses the angry red streaks at the corners of his eyes.

Cas pulls back before he can reach his lips. "Dean, I’m-"

"Stop apologizing."

A broken smile graces Castiel's face for a moment. "You don't understand. This is my fault."

"No. No, no. Don't ever think that, Cas. I know it’s been hard for both of us, but I’m okay. I’m fine, and whatever you’re going through-"

"There are things you don't know, Dean."

"What? Cas -" Drawing his knees up to his chest, Dean scoots back against the headboard. "No. Look at me. You're just depressed. You’re sick, okay?"

"That wasn't a dream."

"What?"

Cas holds up his hands, palms facing outwards.

The black stains are visible, just barely, but as Dean watches they grow, seep, spread and soak through Castiel's skin.

"You're hallucinating, Dean."

"I'm not-"

"You are."

No telling how much Cas has had to drink tonight, but his eyes are clear, lips a firm line.

As Dean watches the ink runs down and up Castiel's arms, tracing along the patterns of veins, wells up in his eyes and drips down his throat. The chewing things that live in their house must be shredding the floorboards. It's a wonder the house is still standing.  

"Don't listen to that," Castiel whispers. "That's nothing."

Their bedroom is clean. There's a print of the Grand Canyon on the wall, the oak desk where Cas's old rock collection crusts the desktop computer, the overstuffed leather chair. Their closet door is half-open and the light is on, dim orange casting a line on the rug. It's just Dean and Castiel on the bed, facing each other. Cas closes his hands, reaches forward to press Dean's forehead.

For the rest of the night Dean sleeps without dreaming.

In the morning Cas is sober. He's mulling over the utility bill when Dean comes up behind him. Last night may have just been a trick of the subconscious but Dean still feels the need to tiptoe. For all he knows right now could be a dream. Only the smell and taste of black coffee places Dean back into reality. Cas blinks up at him as if he didn't hear Dean wake up.

"It's going to be okay," Cas says firmly.

"Yeah?"

"I suppose I had a moment of clarity last night. Time passes so strangely here. Dean, I didn't realize how bad it had gotten until last night."

"What are you talking about?"

"It's all right, Dean. Don't worry about it." Cas gets up from the table. Now Dean sees the bowl of whisked eggs, the bacon already cooked on the cutting board. With determined focus Cas begins making an omelette. "I've got another job interview in a few days. And next week I'm going to talk to the manager at the deli on Michigan street. Might be good, right?"

"I... I guess?"

"I was thinking, Dean. Before I start working again and we go back to routine, we should take a trip. A vacation."

The coffee runs cold down Dean's throat. "You want to take a vacation?"

"I do. We never did make it to the Grand Canyon, did we?"

"That's kind of far," Dean allows. "But I could talk to Bobby, let them know at the co-op."

"It doesn't even have to be the Grand Canyon. We can go anywhere!" The pan jumps beneath Cas's vigorous stirring of the eggs. He drops in the bacon. "Screw it. We could just take a few days. Go to Montana. See some fossil beds, maybe? Or, we could go to the Olympic National Park. Go backpacking or something. Let's go to the Badlands. See the waterfalls on the state border. Anything."

It's some new surge. Cas's hands are shaking around the whisk. They haven't even been to the woodland park thirty minutes away in a long time. Let alone on a god damn road trip. But Dean pulls up Google Maps over breakfast, acts enthusiastic until Castiel speaks in shorter and shorter sentences, turns away to go clean the dishes, and the gnawing beneath the floors sounds louder and louder until Dean gives up and leaves for work thirty minutes early. Gotta beat the morning traffic, after all.

He doesn't look in the rearview mirror, at the rolling dark clouds swallowing up the road. It follows him through the city, along the viaduct, all the way up to Bobby's shop, and he must have spilled an oil pan because it's soaking his jumpsuit all the way to the elbows, dripping from his hands.

Dean is holding a clean filter in his hands and he's got to install it in a 1997 Honda Prelude with a dinged bumper and a crappy paint job, but now he's going to have to take the entire engine apart to figure out what's making that gnawing sound.

Bobby is saying something he can't hear. Dean's hands are slick with oil, but the filter is still clean.

"Go home, boy," Bobby mouths. His hand grabs Dean's shoulder and it should be slipping and sticky with the oil.

Dean scrubs his hands for half an hour in a pitch-black bathroom. Then he puts down the lid of the toilet, takes a seat, and calls Hannah.

Somehow she’s always got time for him.

  


"It's like..." Dean drifts off, clenches his fist. Still clean.  "I don't even know what's real anymore. I'm just watching through a screen."

"Have you experienced this sense of depersonalization before?" Hannah folds her hands on her lap, cocking her head.

"Not really, no. It's just - these dreams I have, they're getting to me. It's like I don't even know what's real and what isn't anymore. Am I awake, am I asleep, does it even make a difference?"

"You're hallucinating."

"No, I'm not - dammit, Cas said the same thing."

"Did you discuss the subject matter of these dreams with him?"

"No."

"I suggest you do."

"Yeah. Sure. I’ll do that."

"You don't sound confident."

"We had a fight." Steepling his fingers together, Dean focuses on the traces of engine grease beneath his nails. No matter how long he showers there's always a trace.

Hannah tilts her head, staring at Dean's hands. Nervous, he separates them, wipes them on his jeans. "Are you still fighting?"

"No. We just. It was just a fight. Couples have those sometimes. I guess... I had a bad dream. Cas seemed kind of freaked. But we're good now. He seemed pretty happy yesterday." Jumpy. Talking too quickly. Dean leaves that part out, but he doesn't miss the minute movement of Hannah's lips, just an echo of a frown.

"Why was Cas... freaked?" Hannah says, pronouncing the last word oddly.

"Told you. I had a bad dream."

"A dream that bled into reality."

The absolute last thing Dean should do is tell Hannah that he's hallucinating. They'll lock him up for sure.

It comes out anyways.

"Well, that's what Cas thinks," Dean amends. "Don't get me wrong. I know what's real and what ain't."

"I'm sure you do." The pen flicks over Hannah's pad.

"What aren't you telling me? What's going on?"

"Everything is proceeding as normal. You're experiencing visions. But at least you're aware of the unreality. Tell me, Dean, are you dreaming right now?"

"Of course not.”

"Exactly. Because you're with me."

"What does that mean?" Dean's left boot hits the stupid plush carpet with a thud. "What's wrong with me? Look, if anyone needs to be hospitalized here, it's Cas. I'm fine. I'm the one who has to take care of him-"

"Which means you need to take care of yourself. Now sit down, Dean."

Dean didn't even realize he was standing. Pacing. Walking circles on Hannah's blue rug, talking with his hands. Still with the grease under the nails. They were a lot dirtier than he thought. His nails are black and grimy. He's disgusting, still covered in the grime from work, and it doesn't make sense because he hasn't even been to the shop today and he took a shower last night, but now it’s all over Hannah’s clean carpet -

Dean falls back onto the couch. "What am I supposed to do? Can you write prescriptions?"

"Calm down," Hannah says simply. "No medication will be necessary, Dean."

"Are you kidding me? You need to refer me to a psych ward, because I am god damn tripping."

Slowly, Hannah shakes her head. Her eyes are very bright, fixated on Dean's own. "No, Dean. You're not hallucinating. You've shown no signs of psychosis. It's only dreams."

Heart pounding, Dean blinks. Looks away from her gaze. Tries to calm the blood racing through his hands. "I - I think something's wrong with me. Wrong with that house. Or Cas."

"You're under a lot of stress, Dean.” Hannah's voice has swayed down to a soothing murmur. Closing his eyes, Dean leans forward and buries his face in his palms. Hannah reassures him, and for a moment he sees a golden field of light.

It's so warm. Outside the rain is falling, but behind Dean's eyelids he sees nothing but waving strands of grass, bathed in summer light. Castiel as he was last summer before the depression sank in, all t-shirt and sunglasses and one of those stupid hats. His back is turned, he's at the edge of the field, and then suddenly he -

"Dean?"

Hannah's touch is soft on his head. Dean looks up at her, to the clock. Their session is over already. No charge this time, Hannah decides. The blinds are always half-drawn in here, but the sun must be hitting Hannah just right. Dean puts his credit card back in his wallet, blinking against the glare.

His head buzzes all the way home. When he gets there, the door is wide open, letting in the rain. Black puddles on the floor, sticking to his boots, but it's only rain. Dean goes to grab the mop first thing and makes a mess of smears all over the hardwood. Soon enough the mop is a lost cause and he leaves it propped up in the garbage can before burning through an entire roll of paper towels.

Finally he forces himself to stop and see that the wood is gleaming. The entire house smells of Pine Sol and his hands are rubbed raw.  

Castiel is gone again, but in the process of cleaning Dean missed the note on the table.

It's short.

_Dean -_

_This is for the best. The house is safe._

_You'll be fine._

_Goodbye._

The paper is held for one moment and then crumpled. Dean goes directly for the last bottle Cas had left open - cheap rum, yet again, and pours it down the drain. Then he calls the police and files a missing persons report. Yes, Castiel was suicidal. No, he wasn't getting help.

"But you've _known_ ," the dispatcher says.

"Well, I didn't think he was actually gonna do it," Dean snaps, but he's got to stay calm and on the line.

The house gets torn apart by police officers. Cas kept no journals, left no clues, but his bookcase is searched anyways. When the sheriff twists her hands together and tells Dean that in most cases if they don't find them in the first forty-eight hours they might as well be dead (phrased gently, but that's the gist), Dean just wonders how the hell she can expect him to hear her subdued tone above the gnawing sounds beneath the floorboards.

Days pass, and Dean doesn't dream. No Castiel shows up in his bed. But the gnawing is louder than ever. Dean takes advantage of his vacation time to spend his days cleaning obsessively, scrubbing every corner of the house. It must be bad pipes or sewage or something - the black sludge drips from every corner, pools beneath the kitchen sink, and he can never, ever get it off his skin, and the whole time the rats chew and chew.

He goes under the house in a Tyvek suit with a flashlight and finds nothing but spiderwebs and anthills. Not one dripping pipe, not even a single piece of rat feces.

The house is clean. The house was always clean. But when Dean looks in the mirror, he can see the smudges on his face.

  
  


Dean would've forgotten his next appointment with Hannah if she hadn't called him. He's given in, halfway through a beer, when his phone rings.

"Cas is gone," he says before she has time to say anything else.

"What?"

"Cas is gone. He left. I don't know. Five days now. They haven't found him. I think he's -" and Dean swallows his words, tries not to say it.

"Castiel hasn't killed himself," Hannah says.

Every internal alarm goes off. Dean's ears start ringing, until he has to drop the phone on the couch besides him, fumble to press speaker. "What did you just say?"

"Castiel hasn't -"

"Castiel."

The line is silent.

"I've never said his full name. Not to you," Dean says. "How-"

The line goes dead. She's hung up. Dean swears. The bottle crashes on the floor and he doesn't know how it happened. Someone is knocking at the door, and he turns, nearly slipping in the puddle of beer.

Hannah is outside.

Hannah made a thirty-minute drive in five seconds.

"This is not allowed," she says, and then.

Then.

Dean must be hallucinating again.

A pair of tawny, feathered wings extend from Hannah's back, and the sunrise is in her eyes.

“The hell,” says Dean.

“It’s okay.”

"Get the fuck away from me," Dean says.

"Stop worrying. You're safe." The wings tuck behind her back - fuck, the neighbors can't see this - and she steps into the house like she belongs. Settles on the couch with her wings at rest. A goddamn eagle-woman. Dean doesn't even have a gun.

"Angel," she corrects. "And a gun wouldn't work on me."

"You!" He'll just settle for pointing at her, then. Standing there with his legs three feet apart looking like a fucking idiot with this - this massive - this thing in his house. Glowing, feathery... _thing_. Not his therapist. Not a human. "Did you just read my fucking mind?"

"Your thoughts are loud."

"Those aren't real."

The wings mimic Hannah's eyebrows. "It's been a while since a human has witnessed the revelation. I forgot how confusing it can be for you."

"The fuck - you - angel? What the fuck. What the- _you’re_ an angel."

"As previously stated."

"What the hell is that. Next you're gonna be telling me God is real."

"The Maker was here, once. Not anymore." 

"So Cas is-"

"My brother."

"Shut up." Wheeling on his heels, Dean goes to the bathroom. Splashes cold water on his face. Counts to ten. Hannah is still on the couch, still with those wings. He jabs his forefinger at her, doesn't sit down.

"So what, this whole time, I’ve been - and you never even told me.”

Dean forces himself to stop spluttering. This is happening. Live in the moment, that’s what Hannah used to say. Be here now. But Hannah has fucking wings now, and Cas isn’t even a human.

It’s okay.

This is here. This is now.

“Alright. Whatever, feathers. Just tell me everything."

So she does.

 

 

Castiel was always a little odd. Somehow he'd had the time and the heart for so much volunteer work. Somehow he was a socially awkward virgin with intricate knowledge of human biology. Cas could talk obscure 16th century demonology, but had never seen Star Wars. The first time he watched a movie with Dean, the way he'd studied the DVD player was as if he'd never seen anything like it before. Then he’d dismantled and reassembled the entire thing. Cas had an infallible green thumb because he could hear the voices of plants, and Dean had rolled his eyes at his hippy talk.

There was the way Cas had looked at Dean for the first time as if he could see all of Dean's soul and found it good. The way Cas always looked at him.

Yeah. It makes sense.

As Hannah tells it, angels have lived on Earth for the last six billion years or so. When apes first stood upright, the angels found their calling. Always on the fringe, helping and guiding humanity. Inspiring the thinkers and healing the sick as the creatures with opposable thumbs started to create their own world. According to the Maker, the humans were made in the angel's own image. As the humans domesticated animals and tamed the land, so the angels took care of their own.

Even for an angel Castiel was a strange one. "Most angels today are lawyers, doctors, CEOs and humanitarians. But Castiel preferred the lowest rungs of humanity.” Hannah looks around their small house, decked out in Goodwill and curbside hauls. “He wanted to absorb humanity, to know what they knew. He would be the one to fall in love with a human. Why he chose you, I'll never know. But I can see his brands on your soul."

"Is that some kind of metaphor?"

"No."

"Jesus." 

"Never existed."

"It's just an - you know what, nevermind." Dean rubs his temple. Six years and he’d never even suspected. "So I've got some angel in me?"

"His Grace has imprinted on you," Hannah says. "An imperfect bond, but strong enough to alter your own perceptions of reality. You've been experiencing his suffering, albeit translated into a human context. "

"Yeah, okay. But what _happened_ to Cas? Why all the - the black shit?"

Hannah steeples her fingers together. She shifts, and Dean sees her human mask fall into place. "I told you already. Our Maker once was, but now it is not. Recently our Maker has absolved himself into Creation, to the farthest reaches of distant galaxies. It's been hard on many of us, but I think Castiel has taken it too far.” She frowns, eyes a thousand miles away. “The Maker was our soul. The Maker drew us out of the Earth when life only existed as single cells. And then - he left us.

“What you've been seeing are the manifestations of Castiel's own despair. His rage and loneliness gnawing at him endlessly. The tides of misery drowning his essence. Human eyes and brains can only see so much. You see the physicality of his feelings, and it seems to me you're starting to feel them yourself.

“The other Castiel, the soft one in your bed. That tells me he still has some hope left. However small, some part of Castiel is still reaching out to you. But you've tainted him."

"Tainted?"

"Castiel is an angel," Hannah says firmly. "The fact that he could even succumb to these feelings of worthlessness only goes to show that he's gotten too close to humanity."

Folding his arms across his chest, Dean studies her careful, tight face. "Don't you have feelings?"

"Sometimes," she allows. "But those are human things."

"You care about Cas."

"He's my brother."

"Help me find him."

"I can try. But if you ask me, I think Castiel has finally given it all up."

"You think he's gone off to kill himself. Can angels even do that?"

"I think there's nothing you can do about it."

Pulling himself from the couch, Dean sways into the kitchen. Three beers in the fridge. He pops the tab on two, hands one to Hannah. She holds it delicately between her fingers, takes a sniff. "Try it," he tells her. She frowns, but takes a sip, rolling the beer in her mouth. Dean matches her, glaring at her loose grip on the bottle. "Now here's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking if there wasn't any hope - if Cas was really gone for good - you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be telling me this if there was something I could do. So show me."

"This is bitter."

"It's an IPA."

"I...hmm." Cocking her head to the side, Hannah squints at the label. "It's vaguely enjoyable."

"Good," Dean grunts.

"Listen, Dean, you may not be suited for this work. The bond between you means might be the only one who can do this, but it's been a long, long time since any human has performed magic. Then again. You seem to be taking the existence of angels well."

All this pussy-footing around is making Dean edgy. Sure, angels and magic and shit are real. Maybe Dean has been in love with a supernatural being for the past six years of his life, but he doesn't have it in him to give a shit. This whole time he's been watching Cas fall, trying to bring him back, giving up and failing him, and now he's gonna chicken out on a chance to get it right just because magic is scary? As if.

"Look, dude, I don't give a damn about the risk. Just tell me what I can do for Cas."

"Follow your heart."

"Well, that sounds fake as shit, but I'll take it." Dean spreads his hands. "And how do I do that, exactly?"

"Summon the daemon."

"Oh - goddammit. So demons are real too. Of course."

"Of course," Hannah says brightly. "Now, to summon the daemon, we-"

"Whoa, whoa. We are not doing this here. No fucking creatures of Hell in my house."

“Not quite it. Hell doesn't exist. For that matter, neither does Heaven. What good would it do for a soul to continue after it's death? What do you think a daemon is but a manifestation of your own soul?

“In my psychotherapy, I use similar techniques. The spirits of the soul are all found - where do you think?”

“Uh… within the soul?"

“Excellent. We’ll make a mage out of you yet. Now, I can't exactly summon a human's daemon of alcoholism, but I can prime his mind to see, confront, and capture his daemon. We can manifest these things without the use of extraneous magic, but the systems for humans are much more literal. When the magicians of old spoke of summoning demons to defeat their enemies, they spoke of finding the power within themselves. Do you understand?"

"You're saying I'm the demon?"

"I'm saying you love Castiel. When you manifest these emotions, when you find the physicality of your bond as it exists in the in-betweens of time and space, you will be able to find him."

"Well, fuck," Dean says, slapping his beer down on the coffee table. "Let's get this show on the road, then."

If Hannah thinks they can scribble Sharpie all over Dean's clean floor she's got another thing coming. Dean empties the printer tray in the bedroom and tapes the sheets together across the kitchen floor, creating a large enough square of paper for him to sit in and have plenty of room for whatever scribbles besides. He has to draw it himself, according to Hannah. She directs his hand, guiding it under her own for the more complex sigils, muttering about the planets.

"Saturn asks us to see reality with objective eyes. To embrace the painful truths," she says. "Coming from the square of Jupiter... no wonder you've both lost your faith."

"Saturn? As in the planet, or the god?”

"The planet, of course. We're currently under its dominion. This is a good time, Dean. If we had waited any longer Mars could anger you, Venus could inflame you to false conclusions."

Dean raises his eyebrow, but continues attempting some angular messes of triangles. "What’s this I'm drawing?"

"Seal of Saturn. This is just to call upon the spheres and draw their power into ourselves to manifest the spirits." Beneath her hands, Dean adds small circles to the end of the sigil.

"This is some astrology bullshit."

"Is it so hard to believe that cosmic space affects mental space?"

"Dude, if you asked me if I believed in any of this crap yesterday I would've called you crazy. And here I am. It's a learning process."

"Learn faster. Now, inside the first circle, we would normally use the Hebrew names for the Maker. But the Maker is gone, so... I don't know. Put your name. In your own language."

DEAN WINCHESTER looks so simple among the magical sigils. Maybe that's exactly what this spell needs. A streak of human through the mumbo-jumbo.

By the time the spell is ready it's nearly dark.  It always gets darkest by the kitchen sink first, where the awning from the back porch blocks the sun. In the flickering candlelight, Dean can almost see that black sludge overflowing, dripping onto the floor. "There are other things in this house," Hannah says as she lights a block of incense and places it in a censer. "Be careful," she warns, and then her voice drops an octave, melts to some sonorous mumble in the language of angels.

The words seem to ink themselves onto Dean's skin. He's fresh-scrubbed and wrapped in Cas's white fluffy bathrobe. Hannah made him meditate for an hour before they could proceed. Dean has been to a yoga class with Cas once or twice - the things you do for love - but all it really did for him was cramp his knees and make him sweat. Now Hannah directs him into the lotus position, and he doesn't even think to move.

There's a sweet musk from the censer as it sways before his eyes. The rhythmic pendulum dizzies him, but Hannah instructed he must keep his eyes open. Stay alert. Focus.  The chanting drifts high into the air, swirling with the smoke. Dean does not look up. He does not look down. He looks straight ahead.

When the smoke coalesces into something thick and black, taking form and wrapping oily tendrils about him, he stays still. There's a light - somewhere, burning his retinas, but he looks into it and then - Hannah says the name of the daemon.

Dean's heart is a mess. He should've known.

There's the fire over there, burning away at the memory of his mother. The ensuing degradation of his father, scattered with broken bottles smashed across the floor of a hospital room. The visions could overwhelm him, but Dean is an outside observer this time. He sees, and he knows.

All of this happened.

The long hallways of Sam, ice freezing over closed doors. Those emotions drifting down could be regret, but, well. They're not dead yet. The old self-hatred rears its head, threatening to suck his entire heart down, but Dean has been learning just how much self-hatred only goes to hurt the ones who love you, thanks. And that over there, that bubbling jelly must be shame. It's kind of gross. Pedantic. Selfish. Feeling shame is just another form of vanity.

This is Dean, more or less. But there's something else.

Even in the painful areas there’s a soft liquid blue pooling over. That night when Dean got the call about his dad. When he'd gone so silent and drunk, and Cas hadn't said a word, just held him until Dean was reduced to sobs. When they were sorting pictures and things into storage, and Cas had asked about the photo of Mary. The first time Cas met Sam they'd had a bit too much to drink, and Cas told Dean how well he'd raised his brother.

Look at all Cas has done for him.

Dean looks at his heart and he sees Castiel.

Fuck, but Dean fell hard for him. He's never stopped falling for him.

So he's found that. Now he's going to save Cas. Find him, at least. He gazes into the light, begs it to let him in, and it opens so easily that this must have been what Cas was waiting for all along. There are so many stars wherever Castiel may be. He sees a wide plain, mountains in the distance. A blue ribbon of light, winding away down a road.

That's it. That's Castiel.

So Dean follows his heart.

 

 

 

Dean travels south, wending his way through Washington State until his heart leads him to a mossy waterfall in some park off I-80. He lingers for a moment, but his heart draws him back down the road again.

His heart takes him to a diner. Cas got a Coke. Dean orders a hot dog. His heart pulls him back down the road.

The maps confirm he's tracing the path of random bus lines throughout the little towns scattered across the Pacific Northwest. In Battle Ground his heart lingers at a Greyhound station. There's a woman on a bench with two sleeping children, heads pillowed on her thighs. He wonders what Cas saw here, how long he waited with the moths fluttering under the pale lights.

His heart takes him to Idaho, then turns south. In Utah his heart wanders - to a mission run by kind but solemn Mormons, to a ribbon of red rock suspended against a pure blue sky. It’s chilly in the desert at night, and Dean sleeps in the back seat of the Impala with the windows rolled up.

Cas is watching him from the rearview mirror.

Dean smiles even if Cas can't see him from the front seat, and the image shimmers in reply before leaving him alone with the stars and the warm slick of leather against his cheek.

Cas shows up sporadically. When Dean buys a jerky stick and a red Bull for the road he's there. When opposing headlights start to hurt his head, a cool hand soothes his temples.

Cas has to know he's coming for him.

The thread runs along the dividing lines of the highway, carrying him deeper and deeper into the southwest. He's in Nevada when it finally fades.

Dean tries the spell again, but his fingers are clumsy around the pen. The floor of the motel room is covered in dry-erase marker, half-remembered sigils smearing when he tries to sit in the center. But he still has his phone, and he still has the number for someone who isn't his therapist anymore.

Perched on the motel bed, Hannah looks annoyed. She reaches for Dean. He scowls and tries to open his mouth, but then everything is slipping, falling apart. The stone bleeds. The walls of the room distort, melt, expand into space. Hubble photographs flash by but they're all real, nebulae passing through Dean's fingertips.

Then Dean rolls over straight into the trunk of a joshua tree, blinking up at a Mojave sunrise.

"Never do that to me again," he says.

Hannah's eyes are scanning the desert. "He was here. Castiel. He's worrying about you."

Sand grits against Dean's cheek. He grinds the side of his face down, rubs at it until he figures the marker is off. When the Impala shifts down into place Dean winces with sympathy for the transmission. But he gives Hannah a grudging nod, slams into the car. Rather than opening the door, Hannah poofs in the passenger seat with a flutter of wings.

"Uh uh. Supernatural entities in the back."

Hannah raises a thinly-trimmed eyebrow. Too Cas-like in her expressions. Then again, Castiel always sat shotgun. So maybe he can let Hannah lean over the dashboard, tap her fingers on the seat between them. Slow transport to an angel, but for some reason Dean wants to pick Cas up in the car. For some reason he wants to slap him in the face with this proof. While Cas's house may be haunted by his own self, the Impala has always been Dean's home alone. The seats are clean, the headlights clear.

Dean might be able to understand why Cas would run out here where the desert stretches into infinity. Salt lakes shimmer white on the horizon, and the bare mountains cut wide stripes of color. At night he curls up in the back seat, watching the stars from the rearview window. Hannah sits on top of the Impala. In meditation she sets her wings free, graceful edges tracing down the sides of the Impala. Dean grumbles when he finds specks of tawny down on the sides of the car, but he secretly wonders what Castiel's wings look like.

"Like the sky," Hannah says.

Dean is going to have to get used to this whole psychic mind-reading angelic shit. "What, Cas's wings?"

"Castiel was formed from the night. Our maker took down shards of darkness and crafted them into feathers. The stars formed the ligatures and the absence of light filled in his plumes. As the maker sang his songs of the darkness so did Castiel's wings expand, until he was the night sky and the sky was in him."

Wow.

Okay.

"Cut the poetry," Dean tells Hannah.

"I'm speaking literally."

"Course you are," Dean mutters. His eyes are on the desert, as if Castiel is going to make this easy for him and just show up on the side of the road.

Winter in Washington always brings cloud cover. Weeks could pass without a glimpse of the stars, especially against the glare of the city. It's early morning here in Nevada, but the sky is a clear blue all the way to the horizon. Tonight Dean thinks he'll sleep in the car, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. See the stars for the first time in a while.

"Actually, your meteorologists are predicting rain," Hannah says.

"Can you stop with the mind-reading?" A thought hits Dean then. "Wait. Has Cas been reading my mind this whole time?"

Hannah sighs, looking out the window. "I always told him he should have been. You made him forget himself."

"Well, geez. Don't I feel special."

 

 

  
If Castiel is the night, Hannah is the dawn. In the moonscaped salt flats her wings are the only spot of color. Against their glow, Dean still can't see the stars. Rather than go build a nest or fly around or whatever angels do, she insists on staying with Dean through the night. Dean is already half-asleep when the roof of the Impala creaks yet again, and then he has to chase a damn bird-lady off of his ride. She can perch anywhere in the desert she wants, just not on his baby.

They don't talk much during the drive. Hannah directs them down the roads until she says she isn't sure of the way.

"Can't we just do the ritual again?"

Hannah just looks uneasy. "I don’t think he wants me to. Surely you know where he is by now."

"I don't - " Dean starts, but then he remembers.

They never did make it to the Grand Canyon. It must've been three years ago when they planned the road-trip, even went as far as to request time off, but they'd just ended up in California soaking up the beach with Sam. Not that they worried much. Santa Cruz was just supposed to be a pit stop, a bit out of their way, but then the Impala's A/C had taken a shit and Sam was so excited to have them down there. The kid had just graduated and was overwhelming in his enthusiasm for freedom. Before they knew it they'd been in California for five days already, and Cas just shrugged when Dean finally brought up the purported purpose of the road trip. The whole point was just a vacation. Dean wasn't even so sure he'd give a damn about the Grand Canyon. There was a fucking shopping mall at the Grand Canyon, and you couldn't even ride a donkey to the bottom anymore.

Once Dean gets the idea in his head it won't leave, so he might as well.

As soon as he knows where he's going, Hannah takes off. Her grace is fading, her rising sun hidden in clouds. She won't say it, but Dean gets it.

She doesn't want to see Castiel as he is now.

Even if this all works out well, Hannah will always blame Dean.

When Dean first met Sam's current girlfriend, she hadn't seemed right for him. She was going to change him. She got him a new coat that wasn't the same ratty brown hoodie, told him she liked his hair long and introduced him to braised kale and kombucha.

Yeah, well. Dean got over it.

Hannah isn't Dean, and Cas isn't Sam, and she's helped him out far enough. He tells her goodbye, and that he's still got her number.

"I'm not your client anymore," Dean says. "But I'll call you."

"When you bring him back home," - and it doesn't sound quite right, how she says that last word - "I guess you might as well." She gives him one last dead-eyed glare. "Just find him."

Now, Dean can't see a trace of his old therapist in Hannah. It's a fucking miracle she ever managed to trick him into thinking she was human. Maybe Dean was too caught up in himself to notice.

The rain comes, a light dusting soaked up quickly by the dry earth, and the desert awakens. Las Vegas passes in a blur, just a random slap of bright lights and concrete in the wilderness, and Dean keeps driving. Red mountains overwhelm the highway as he crosses into Arizona, following signs for the Grand Canyon.

Dean heads to the south end welcome center, where the campers crowd the trails, and completely misses out on the view.

Cas is hidden behind a crowd of tourists. A toddler runs straight into Dean's legs. He bends down to check on her, but his eyes are on the dark figure staring down into the canyon. Shirt a little too big, jeans a little too ratty, that same hoodie he's been wearing for months wrapped around his waist. Those aviators always looked good on him. Dean sidles up next to him, inching his left hand down the rail until he's just brushing the side of Castiel's palm.

"It's gotten deeper," Castiel says, flicking a cigarette butt to the ground.

"Yeah?"

"Since the last time I saw it."

"What was it, just glaciers?"

"I saw it after it warmed up, too. The rivers were a lot bigger. I swam through here, many years ago.”

“Must’ve been pretty,” Dean says. “Too bad y’all didn’t have cameras back then.”

“Could’ve used you back then,” Cas chuckles, and Dean rolls his eyes. “So, I know Hannah told you everything." Somewhere cameras snap, and Cas knocks his sunglasses up when he rubs his eyes. "But what are you doing out here?"

"What do you think?"

"I guess if it was the other way around, I’d do the same thing. But I didn't think you would feel the same way. I was surprised to see you following me."

"You couldn't even trust me, Cas?"

"Dean, I'm sorry."

"Don't tell me sorry again," Dean says. He grabs Castiel's cold hand, squeezes. "You’re just sick, okay?"

"I don't even have a soul, Dean. I'm no human, I don’t get sick."

“Angels don’t sleep with humans, either,” Dean says snidely. “You have a brain. You have a body. It gets sick. Remember that cold you had, must’ve been four years ago?”

"Excuse me?" A woman's voice behind them. Dean turns to see a woman holding a camera, her family behind her. They're all speaking some other language, but the woman's English is only slightly accented. "Would you mind taking a picture of us all?"

Dean has to respect the lack of selfie sticks, but it's Castiel who takes the camera. Speaking to the relatives in their own tongue, Cas takes two normal shots and one 'silly-face' photo. Cas just shrugs when Dean asks him about it. Apparently being a billion-year old multidimensional wavelength of celestial power means that Cas can speak any damn language he pleases. Which just goes to unlock a whole new level of potential. Dean asks him to order a Coke from a snack stand in Russian or something, but Castiel won't do it.

All those times Cas was supposedly off at work, he traveled.

Each piece of mystery pottery has a story behind it. All those hours Dean figured he was off shooting up or something, Cas was healing cataracts on the Mongolian steppes. Curing infants of congenital heart defects in Canada. Treating victims of glyphosates in Argentina.

"It didn't help." Cas shrugs. "It's never helped. What's one life, three lives, twenty lives? They all die anyway - whether it’s today or in ten or sixty years. You know, we weren't allowed to do anything about the black plague. Now I understand why."

"You saved people." The Coke goes down sticky-sweet and a little flat. Dean fiddles at the label with his fingers. Made in China. He wonders what Castiel had seen there, how many lives he had touched. A Falun Gong practitioner handed Dean a terrifying pamphlet about oppressive government regimes downtown once. The same day he'd seen a really cute video online of a frustrated zoo employee dealing with five baby pandas. China is very far away and Dean barely even thinks about it, but Castiel is older than the stones used to build the Great Wall.

The world is a vast place. Just the sight of the Grand Canyon is dizzying, billions of years of history exposed in full color, and Cas has lived through all of it. "I mean, it may not seem like much to you," Dean continues, "but you saved lives. That's always a good thing, Cas. Maybe you were just spreading yourself too thin."  

"I’m supposed to be infinite, Dean.”

“Yeah, infinite and exhausted. If there’s one thing I know? All you can give another person is your own self. But you gotta make sure there’s a self left to give. It’s not selfish to take care of yourself, Cas. Thought you taught me that.”

“All I ever wanted was to help people. But after - after, I think I was only trying to save myself." Shielded by his sunglasses, Castiel is impassive. "I didn't always fly around on some desperate hero's quest, you know. Sometimes I watched the insects. Followed birds on their migrations. I swam with the glowing things at the bottom of the sea. Or, you know. I went to pet stores and sat in front of the fish tanks."

Dean has to wipe away a smile at that. A strange man with bags under his eyes and scruffy hair, maybe covered in red dust from some far-off country, curled up in front of the fish tanks. Parents would shield their kids eyes, probably, tug them along and tell them not to ask any questions about the strange man. Think about anything for too long, the floor gives way.

"You know, Hannah showed me her wings. Freaked me out, man, but it was pretty awesome." Dean sways on his feet, bumping Castiel's shoulder with his own. "You should show me yours sometime."  

 

 

 

 

 

Inside Cas is an infinite library of books Dean can only hope to thumb through. But this would be some engraved frontispiece, set aside under glass. They wait till dark, drive a ways down the roads of the national park, and there in the desert, beneath the undulating glimmer of the Milky Way, Cas unfurls his wings.

Lying down at Castiel's feet, hands behind his head, Dean watches them blot out the stars. The moon is full and his phone has a flashlight, all the better to see the hidden swirls of rainbows in the black. Slick like oil sheen and soft as Dean imagines a baby owl would be.

"Can I touch them?"

Cas kneels. Sitting up, Dean watches feathers trickle past his fingers in a glide and drag. They're not as soft as he thought. Each quill tingles his skin, electric aftershocks leave him buzzed.

Then Cas wraps his arms around Dean and in a crack of thunder, the ground slips away. Dean doesn't realize it at first, but there's the desert falling behind him, getting smaller and smaller. Choking, Dean forces himself to freeze, stay still, hold tighter to Cas's body. He's screaming for Cas to put him down, but the wind steals his voice and the wings keep beating, carrying him up to an impossible height.

"Sorry," Cas says. "I forget you're afraid of flying. This is pretty natural to me." He hums pleasantly as if they aren’t a billion fucking miles away from safety suspended in open space and Dean literally can’t feel anything under his feet.

"Please - please - please put me down," Dean pants.

"I will. But - do you just want to try? Take a look." Cas's legs come up to bracket Dean, wrap him and hold him close. "It's beautiful up here, Dean."

Shaking, Dean tries to look. Down at the neon shimmer of Las Vegas, the only light in the desert, then back towards wherever the Grand Canyon must be, and then straight down. His belly heaves, his throat closes up, but the wings press closer and closer, and he tries to tell himself he's safe. Dripping black feathers surround him. One brushes his cheek. Castiel's eyes are so wide, so trusting, and Dean thinks, okay. Trust.

This is Castiel’s world. This is the guy that he chose. Dean can deal with that.

Still holding onto him, Cas spreads his wings. Impossibly large, incredibly close, and black enough to swallow galaxies.  

And then Dean realizes it isn't all the wings. It's the skies stretching above and below, the stars and the Milky Way and all of the universe, blanketing them both. Dean looks into infinity and it's Castiel with the skies reflected in his eyes.

"I used to come up here for solace, but it just made me lonely."

Dean looks down at the blue and green sphere, suspended in space, and swallows his fear. Just a Hubble photograph. NASA's photo of the day. Sam used to like that blog.

Seeing his home from this angle is actually kind of beautiful.

“I’m bound to the Earth,” says Cas. “This is as far as I can go.”

“Far enough for me.”

"This Earth was ours to protect. As was told to me at the beginning, so I did. And I spent my days down there, and I loved every inch of it and my Maker loved me. I watched humans live and die, love and hurt.

“Then I met you and stepped off the ledge of neutrality. That was it.

“I fell in love with you. And for the first time, I learned how to truly love humanity.

“Then everything changed, and - all I had was you.

“So I went to work and watched them die in the retirement home. I saw the broken souls at the homeless shelter. At the dog rescue I saw how the pain of humanity filtered down even to their best friends.

“I saw humans take their own lives and I was happy for them. It’s a question I still can’t answer - the choice between suicide or life. What keeps you going when you’ve witnessed the futility of it all? How do you balance the pain you cause your loved ones versus the pain you’re experiencing? At what point do you have to make the jump? Human developments in the field of mental health are very, _very_ recent. And your therapist - I knew it was her the moment I reached the door, and I couldn’t face her. She was one more angel that I’d shut out of my life.”

Cas pauses, head bowing, and Dean wonders what human pain looks like from the angelic perspective. “You never liked me seeing her,” he murmurs, but Cas starts to speak again, distant and methodical.

“I buried my feelings and clung to you because you were all I had, but I couldn't really see myself, Dean. As an angel I'm not supposed to have these thoughts. I'm not supposed to change or grow or even die. But I did. And I came up here when I was confused and I felt nothing, and I looked at the skies the Maker had abandoned me for and I felt rage, and out here in the emptiness Earth just seemed so small. Everything I had done just seemed so insignificant.  

“There was no purpose or design to anything anymore. I was adrift, and I was lost. And I think I used you in the wrong ways, Dean. I made you my new Maker, and I clung so hard to you that I had nothing of myself left. That wasn't fair to you and I knew it. But I was too weak to walk away from you, to let go of the only thing I had, so I thought - make him hate me. Make him leave of his own volition. Abandon me like my Maker did.”

“You really think I'd ever-” Dean starts, but Cas cuts him off gently. He's looking at the skies again.

“Do you ever wonder about life on other planets, Dean?”

“Lots of people do.” Somewhere amongst the endless lights, Dean sees a red glow that must be Mars. “I think it’s silly to think that we’re the only ones out there.”

“I wonder if they have angels, too. I wonder what the Maker told them?”

“Who cares? It probably abandoned them too, the fucker.”

Cas grins at that. “Look. I'm very old, Dean, and I’m tired. And I know I’ll have to watch you die someday and just keep on and on until - well, however this planet dies. I’ve seen entire species die out, and I’ve seen that death is only part of nature, and I thought - I don't know what I thought. I thought too much. There’s so much _time_ … maybe the other angels are right about me. Maybe I got too close.” A throaty chuckle rumbles in Dean’s ear, twisted and wry. “I'm so sorry, Dean."

"Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you talk to me?"

"You're just a human. And I'm... this."

Dean looks down at the Earth again, breathes in the ozone scent of Castiel's wings and thinks, this is the partner he chose. "This is you, Cas. But it's not all of you." He cups Cas's cheek in his hand. Even this massive, inhuman thing feels so fragile under his skin. "Honestly? All this angel stuff is freaking me out, but it's still you. Maybe I don't know all of this shit, but I know you. You're my Cas. Human or not, whether you think you're broken or not. And for the record - I don't think you are."

"You have too much faith in me."

"I'll be the judge of that."

"I hurt you, Dean."

"Yeah - well, family gets a pass, okay? Now come on, babe. Let's just get back to land, please?"

Cas glides down, skipping the city for a liquid pool of stars that widens into a lake stopped off by a dam big enough to see from space. They settle on the southern shore of Lake Mead. Across the lake only a few campfires burn, but as they sit into the night they slowly flicker out of sight.

There are crystals growing on the rocks beneath their feet. Arcs of flame fly from Castiel's wings and illuminate the shoreline, the angles of rock jutting up around the beach. Between the reflections of the crystals and the stars shimmering on the lake, it's better than the stratosphere. Here, they can touch the stars. Elongated pinions trace ripples in the water, scattering the light.

Somewhere up there is Castiel's maker.

Down here a fish jumps.

Dean is wedged between Castiel's knees, wet breath on his neck. Castiel raises one wing and folds it across Dean. The feathers aren't so cold anymore. As the cold descends Dean burrows into the feathers, stroking dusky quills, and time must only be a human thing because the stars have rotated and the moon is higher and now the sun is rising, smoke curling from RV campsites, and Dean is still awake.

In the swirl of tourists on top of the Hoover Dam, Dean listens to Castiel's even breath in half-whispered stories about when all this desert was no more than a few glaciers, about the ancient souls of joshua trees. In a gift shop Dean finds a windchime made of sheer cuts of stone and hangs it over the rearview mirror.

They sleep in the car the first night, stretched on opposite seats before Dean figures he can spring for a motel. Well worth it. On the second night Cas curls up with Dean, touches the inner angle of Dean's elbow, and that's it. Dean turns and Cas leans, and they're kissing, actually kissing for the first time in an eternity. Cas's tongue in his open mouth. Cas's hands cradling his head. Cas's lips breathing apologies and benedictions between his own. Their breaths mingling together, dampening their cheeks and it’s warm for the first time in ages, warm at the very core of Dean’s chest.

It's been so long. They're careful around each other. Cas kisses the entire line of Dean's jaw before he moves to his mouth. Holding his shoulders, Dean lets Cas take his time. Until he's whining, hips moving with a mind of their own. They're grinding in their boxers like teenagers, and before Cas comes he presses a kiss to the corner of Dean's eye. It stings, as if Dean's crying.

"Stop apologizing," Dean pants. He's seeing Cas through a blur. Thumbs come up on either side of his nose, tracing a line beneath his eyes. "Cas, it's okay. We're okay."

"I didn't say anything."

"But we're okay, right?"

After, when they're side by side on the bed, Cas raises his hands and shows Dean what magic is. Unlike Hannah's rituals and Enochian sigils, Castiel only sends spheres of light spinning around the room. Clouds of nebulae and diagrams of stars rise above their heads.

"But I don't like to look at the stars anymore," Cas says.

"What do you like to look at?"

The planets turn green, grouping themselves in a hexagonal grid. Currents of energy chug along as the chloroplasts get to work.

A sample of bacteria from beneath Dean's nail, magnified and projected onto the ceiling.

The dance of the chromosomes, coils of DNA wriggling like caterpillars. Divide, bend, and sync.

"I don't have DNA," Cas says. "That was reserved for you."

"Are you sure about that?" Turning, Dean strokes Castiel's extended arm. Feels the electric currents pulsing through. Wonders again how he never noticed how much Cas kept repressed before.

"Well." Cas looks down at the slick on Dean’s stomach. "I guess there must be something in there."

"We were made in your image, right?”

“I guess the lines blur somewhat, don’t they?”

“So, do you sleep? I mean - before -” Dean doesn’t add the part about how Cas learned to knock himself out with alcohol.

“I meditate. I watch you.” Cas curls on his side, throwing an arm over Dean. “I want to try to sleep tonight. I wonder if I’ll have any dreams.”

 

 

Dean wakes up the wee hours, reaching for Castiel. He's already awake, sitting up against the headboard with a distinctly non-postcoital glow bathing his face. Blue light spills from in between his cupped palms.

"Good morning, Dean."

"Hey, Cas." Cas smiles, tilts his head to make room for Dean's head to rest on his shoulder. "Whatcha got there?"

"This?" Spreading his thumbs, Castiel reveals something fluttering. It's very small, moving too fast to see clearly, but there might be a pair of wings in the spinning ball of light. "This is my Grace. It's a part of me."

"Well, put it back where it came from."

"That's the plan."

Cas puts his grace in an empty water bottle where it beats its wings against the plastic. They dress quickly, take their coffee to go. Dean doesn't ask, just follows Castiel's lead.

Getting to the cliff’s edge requires a short hike, hopping a fence and ignoring a few signs, until they're perched on a stone mountain overlooking the vast lake. At this hour the vista is nothing but shadows. Dean curls an arm around Castiel's waist as they stand at the rim. If they fell from here they'd hit a few rocks on the way down, bounce and bash and leave bloody streaks that would blend right in with the red rocks when the sun rose before sinking into the waters of Lake Mead.

Once upon a time, so long ago it makes Dean dizzy, an angel sprang from the earth. As volcanoes roared and the Earth's crust trembled and split, as meteors raced overhead, as lightning struck a portent cluster of molecules, something was born that now struggles to escape the plastic.

“We come from the earth and to it we return,” Cas says. “All of us - angel, human, animal and plant. Even light itself can’t escape a black hole.” Between his cupped fingers the light flickers. "This Grace is what makes me an angel. Without it, I'm nothing."

"You mean human?"

Cas shrugs, watching the light leak into the lake. "In six and a half billion years the sun will collapse and this solar system will crumble. Given enough time the universe will reach maximum entropy. Ending is inevitable, and even the Maker itself could not withstand the end of the universe. But I won't be there to see it."

Already this planet is past middle age.

If Dean's lucky, he could live to be a hundred.

It would be good to die with white hair and a beloved hand in one's own. Honestly, Dean can't think of a better way to go. So he smiles even though Castiel is about to throw himself off a fucking cliff because he's looking at Dean like he can't wait to live. For however long they have, however much they get.

People talk a lot of shit about dying for someone or living for someone, as if that’s the truest expression of love. Dean looks at the red-orange streaks of stone and wonders whether or not this is suicide.

It’s just about making choices. 

This is Castiel's choice. 

“I was going to do this at the Grand Canyon,” Cas says. “But the water here is so full of life. It’s a better place for it, I think.”

When Castiel releases the Grace, it falls and fades into the lake. Cas takes a deep breath, sighs, and rests his head back against Dean's shoulder.

His hands are warm in Dean's own.  

  
  


It’s the honeymoon phase all over again. Cas's first breakfast as a human is almost too rich, steak and eggs and country gravy slathered over biscuits with a bowl of fruit and cottage cheese on the side to keep it healthy. Cas licks gravy off Dean's spoon and says he could never taste the pepper before.

"This is why you were such a shitty cook," Dean scoffs. "You could barely even taste."

"I was a great cook."

"Just a little extra blood in your pasta sauce."

Really not something to joke about. But Cas just smiles, ducking his head.

As it turns out, sticking his head out the window reminds Cas of flying. He looks ridiculous in his aviators, seatbelt off so he can stand out of the car, and Dean has to tug him back down.

"You look like a damn dog," Dean tells him.

"It's nice." Hair blown back and breathless, Cas laughs. "I’m feeling everything so much, now. The wind on my skin -" and he's out again, eyes closed against the highway.

Dean keeps splurging on motels. In Las Vegas he books a room two blocks from the strip, where the steak and lobster is only ten bucks and Cas inhales lemony garlic butter. They skip the ice-bucket of champagne and fall into a foamy king-size mattress.

It’s been so long since they’ve done this that they forgot to buy lube. They huddle together in a Walgreens, horny and giggling like teenagers, caught up in the rush of each other. “If you were still an angel, could you just, like, magic it up?” Dean whispers, mouth tickling Cas’s ear.

“That’s ridiculous - I would never-”

“All this time, we coulda saved so much money.”

“Oh, shut up.” Cas grabs something water-based. “Is this what we always used? Fuck, I don’t even remember.”

“Just grab something quick,” Dean hisses. He’s hopping on his feet a little. Not that he can bring himself to give a shit at half past midnight in a Vegas Walgreens with flushed cheeks and half-pulled-on clothing. Everyone’s gonna think they just got married at one of those drive-through chapels.

Once they're naked, once Cas pushes Dean down onto the bed and rears up over him, everything stops. Cas stays poised above Dean, such an oddly tender look in his eyes that Dean leans up on his elbows to bring him back to the present.

"You waited for me," Cas says. "Thank you."

"Make it up to me."

"I could spend the rest of my life doing that."

"You've only got the past six months or so to make up to me," Dean says wisely. "So you better get started."

Cas touches him like it's the first time. Broad hands reverent and possessive, squeezing Dean's hips, massaging his arms, mouth breathing nonsense about how fucking beautiful Dean is, how good he feels. Dean chuckles when Cas noses the soft pudge of his belly, yelps when Cas moves lower and tastes his inner thighs.

"It's so good," Cas murmurs, delirious. "Dean, everything, it feels - it feels -"

"What was it like before?"

"Good." Cas glances up from between Dean’s legs. "Transcendental, even. But it wasn't quite this," he says and follows his mouth with his fingers until Dean throws back his head and fucks himself back on Castiel's hand.

Dean has new things to discover, too. There's a trace of something earthier on Cas's skin. Something richer inside his mouth. He doesn't know if Cas used to sweat quite this much, if his muscles ever slipped beneath Dean's fingers so much. If his lips ever got so chapped and his cheeks ever got so flushed. Dean runs his hands up Cas’s broad back to his neck to tangle and tug at his hair, and Cas moans, dragging his head back into the pull.

At some point Dean is certain they're going to break the bed.

At some point Dean is certain he won't be able to walk again.

After Cas rubs them down with a damp towel they're still sweating. Dean is curled into and around Cas, broad hands running up and down his spine, sending aftershocks of thrills. Just biochemicals. Only blood rushing through their bodies and hormones flooding their imbalanced brains. There used to be something electric, Dean thinks. Lightning in the clouds. Something that sparked and tingled when he touched Cas, and he'd always figured the sex was just that good. This, though, is more raw. Earthier. This is tectonic plates shifting, he decides, and giggles to himself in Cas's armpit.

Cas looks down at him bemusedly.

"It's just different. In a good way, but different." Dean says.

"How so?"

"You're human now."

"I know."

By the time they make it home, Dean's used up most of his paid time off. Their bank account is dismal, but Cas just shrugs. Hannah was out of Dean’s network and charged a hundred dollars a session, and she doesn’t even eat food. “And that’s why she paid our December rent,” Cas says.

“She was worried about you.”

“I know. I hurt her pretty badly, too. I should thank her, or apologize, or both...” Cas looks down at the lines on his palm.

“Hey.” Dean nudges his shoulder. “Thanks for not killing yourself, man.”

Cas looks at him with wide eyes, a smile taking him by surprise.

 

Like all good things, it takes time.

It takes blisters on their hands and dirt on their cheeks. But the dead plants in the garden are composted, the bin raked and tossed. Charlie brings them chicken poop from the old flock and jokingly suggests they take them off her hands.

"Don't get me wrong, they're just... loud. Stinky. I love them! But, you know, you see those cute chickens that are like pets and you expect one thing, and instead I've got these little dinosaurs that hate me and keep flying over the damn fence. I don’t know how you handled it, Cas.”

"Well, if it isn’t working out..." Cas starts, and Dean rolls his eyes because there goes any hope he had for a decent lawn. But hey, eggs.

Together they rummage through the seed files. Dean wants the Chiogga beets. Castiel wants to make real lacto-fermented cucumber pickles. Careful blessings are pressed into the soil with each seed. Cas carves sigils into the garden beds to protect against pests and mold and shows Dean how to bless the rain barrels. Cas sows herbs used in magic, for healing and protection, to toss into the soups at the homeless shelter. He's started doing that again. Just one, small thing.

The garden is getting a little ridiculous, but anything they don't eat can be donated to the food bank. Fresh produce can be hard to find there. They can give flowers to the lady with cancer down the street, and the neighborhood children will like the visiting butterflies. Hannah seems to enjoy the butterflies, too. Not that she says much. There's still an anger there, but when she sits in their yard like a garden ornament Cas sits beside her, and Dean brings them iced tea before leaving them alone. It's their own sort of therapy session; all fees waived for family.

There’s pills, too. Of course there’s pills. Cas is wary of the Zoloft at first, but alcohol’s a drug too so he might as well give something new a shot.

As for Dean, the therapist Hannah recommended has been confirmed for human. Missouri even takes his insurance. She has a cozy office and a keen insight. Dean likes her.

With the spreading leaves of spring comes a good dry week to fix the roof. Hand a visor over his eyes, Cas squints up at Dean, brings him fresh water bottles and catches the box of nails when it slides down and does a backflip over the rain gutter. From here Dean can look down on the hoophouse Cas is trying to build, gluing PVC together in a grid that will rise and bend into a 6x4 shape. There will be tomatoes and peppers in the summer, and kale and lettuce in the winter.

Next winter.

Next year.

The automatic watering system takes Cas two days to construct, but it's got to be done before they can visit California. The phone call is awkward as hell, and Dean's throat closes up a few times, but it's just another prerequisite.

Sam thought one of them was having an affair. Of all the fucking things. He kind of laughs when Dean tells him, asks him if he thinks mental illness is really something to be ashamed about, and Dean has nothing to say to that.  

Atop a windy red cliff Sam points at a leaping dolphin and tells Cas he's thinking about going to grad school at the University of Washington, but not to tell Dean yet. So Cas tells Dean that same night beneath the comforter thrown on top of an air mattress on Sam's kitchen floor, and Dean lets it slip that he knows over sushi the next day.

"We could be neighbors," Dean says. "But, I guess you might want to live close to the university. I'm just saying, U-District? You don't wanna live there."

"No promises yet," Sam says around a mouth full of hamachi and rice. "It's just an idea."

Maybe it was Sam suggesting they order a small sake with the sushi. Maybe it was the change in weather. Maybe it was nothing but the ebb and flow. But their third day in California is a bad one. Dean keeps his hand in Castiel's hair, leaning against the cabinet where Sam keeps the pots and pans he never uses until Cas doesn't want the touch anymore.

"I like your hair," Dean tells him. "It feels nice."

Cas twitches, readjusting his position. “It’s greasy.”

Dean shrugs, but he takes his hand down. After an hour, Cas shifts under his blanket, dark tufts brushing Dean's knuckles, and he takes the hint.

When Sam gets home he takes one look at them sprawled out on the floor and wisely keeps his mouth shut. He calls for pizza, and Cas raises his head once the spicy smell of pepperoni fills the apartment. Dean gives him some of the mushrooms from his slice.

Before Sam lets them leave, he forces promises out of both Dean and Cas. Maybe they won't always be kept, but the important part is that they're saying the words.

It's a good visit, but it's a relief to come home. Just to pull up in the driveway and feel that settle in the gut at the sight of the vibrant front yard, the retouched brown paint, the chickens scattering from the gate.

Bad days will come. They'll always be there. But the television hasn't been turned on in so long that Dean drops it off at Goodwill and puts a massive fishtank in its place. They build it together, Dean buying the pretty rocks and Cas carefully selecting fish. Bubbling water slots nicely into the space left empty by the endless gnawing. At the end of their days, they sit on the couch and watch fish together.

Sometimes a fish dies, but they'll just end up adding nitrogen to the compost bin.

In the late fall when the squashes spill over the garden beds, Cas gets his first grey hair. Dean finds him trapped in front of the mirror, words tumbling over themselves, but he's smiling and makes Dean look at the streak at his left temple.

It's flawless.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Say hi to me, I'm [spoopernaptime](http://spoopernaptime.tumblr.com/) on tumblr.


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